Ball Shifter Vs. Dog Shifter?

[Wertles]

Originally Posted by asid61

I assume you know how both of these work?
Anyways, ball shifters require less force to shift but one of our mentors doesn't like them, as they wear out in industrial applications. But for FRC, wear is not really a problem with them I hear. The Vexpro ballshifter is lighter than the WCP shifter.
Open shifters are probably not going to die ue to carpet grime as long as you wipe them off after a regional.
We used a ballshifter this year to winch back out catapult (several hundred pound of force) and the only thing we had to modify was to beef up the pneumatic cylinder so that it would have enough force to shift.

We were planning on using them for the drive train so I don't think that would be a problem for us.

Originally Posted by nathannfm

MOE used the 3 CIM ball shifters this year and we experenced significant wear on the aluminium shifting shaft. I heard a few other teams experienced this on their winches but this was on our drive, enough that the most worn one was unable to shift. We also had some of the miniature ball bearings fail, possibly related to this. We never did get to the bottom of the problem (possibly user error related to the pneumatic coupler) but I have to stress that VexPro and JVN were extremely helpful and generous when we told them of the problems we were having. I also believe it was mentioned that this component would soon be replaced with a steel version which I know some teams already took it upon themselves to manufacture. If you are looking to purchase gearboxes in preparation for 2015 I would wait and see if VexPro has another product unveil in mid December like they have had the last 2 years. You don't want to be stuck with "last years model" if they come out with something better.

So those are from shifting pneumatically? Last year we waited too long and were stuck with Toughbox Minis. It is in our best interest to order these gearboxes and test them well before the build season

[TheLoveGouru]

As the driver for MOE, I can attest to that we are running around 14 fps high and 6 fps low with 6 CIMS on a 4" wheels. On average, I did shift approximately 15 times each match with hard accelerations and sudden breakings for jukes and dodges.

[Pratik Kunapuli]

Since everyone that has posted so far has posted about ball shifters, I'll give my experience with dog shifters. Team 341 has used dog shifters in their drivetrains for the past 3 years, and we have experienced no significant wear what so ever. We found that the dogs shift and mesh so easily, that we had a servo actuated PTO in 2013 (which we never ended up using), that engaged effortlessly. Although we did use custom transmissions for the past 2 years, our 2014 gearbox was just a WCP 3 Cim DS repackaged with new plates. We purchased the gearbox and used the exact same internals of the gearbox. As driver for the past 2 years, I can attest that these drivetrains were pushed very hard. We had very aggressive gearing in 2014 and shifted very often. However, despite this amount of usage, the shifting was just as smooth and effective as it was day 1. Hope this answers your question or provides another perspective.