The Best Encoders for Drivetrain

[ice.berg]

Originally Posted by Munchskull

Question for the people using grey hill encoders. Why don't you use a more structurely sound mounting method or an encoder that let's a shaft in to it?

The encoder is still mounted to our gearboxes soundly, its just the coupling between the gearbox shaft and the encoder shaft that the surgical tubing is used.

A. Cost - for four corners its cents for surgical tubing compared to the 15+ dollars per corner for precision couplers.

B. Vibration - the surgical tubing spins the shaft but at the same time limits a lot of the vibration transfer into the encoder generated by the gears and robot moving around.

C. Misalignment - Goes hand 'n hand with vibration. The surgical tubing allows for slight misalignment of the encoder and the output shaft. Where as a precision coupler is not as forgiving. The grayhill encoders are quite durable compared to others but still we want to limit the extra load caused from misalignment