Bang Bang Control, motors, and transmissions

[gblake]

Originally Posted by David Lame

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Is there any way other than destructive testing to figure out what are the limits of these components?

Yeah, sorry for jumping ahead to suggesting a way to be more gentle.

To answer your specific question, you can do some heinous calculations (an expert might not think they are heinous), using wisely chosen approximations, and the result will be an estimate (possibly accompanied by a probability distribution).

Being gentle delays the inevitable, and keeping spare parts handy is a way to reduce the effects of a failure..

I'll bet the consensus from us folks in the CD peanut gallery will be a recommendation to invest a little time in examining the parts occasionally to see if they are showing any obvious signs of trouble (broken teeth, sloppy bearings, etc.), having a backup plan just in case your luck runs out before you are finished using the robot, and a guess that your luck won't run out if you only attend one more tournament (that would be a *guess* that you are probably using parts that will survive, even though we don't know what those parts are ).

Blake