2003 Drill Motors Good or Bad?

Was the extra power provided by the new drill motors worth the trouble of all of the repairs and replacements needed this year or was this a bad move by FIRST?

[Caleb Fulton]

We definitely had some problems

They DESOLDERED themselves, for heaven's sake...

[Mike Schroeder]

i think that the FIRST desgined motor mounts were more pain than the motors were, if they just provided us with the casing like thy have in previous years, then i think that would have solved alot of problems

[WakeZero]

Originally posted by D.J. Fluck
Was the extra power provided by the new drill motors worth the trouble of all of the repairs and replacements needed this year or was this a bad move by FIRST?

What repairs? We used both drill motors to drive our robot, and did not have to swap them out once. They lasted from the beginning of the AZ regional to the end of Nationals. I think most teams ran into problems because they did not keep the axle going into the drill motor load free

[ajlapp]

the new drills weren't terrible. we had a few problems with the brushes, but overall they performed well. i will say though that i don't think it's wise to have one set of motors that are so much more powerful than the others. how about a set of four? or even six? we need more of the same types of motors......changing motors also helps to level the playing field amongst rookies and vets. new motors means new experiences for everyone.

[rees2001]

I agree with WakeZero, I believe we used the same motors all thoughout the build-season right up through the end of our second regional. We probably would have kept them for Nats if we could have found a way to go.
The Housings that were supplied by FIRST were nice, we won't use them again but it sure would have been cool to have them our Rookie year. I think there was a good selection of motors this year & many teams put them to good use.

[Adam Y.]

What repairs? We used both drill motors to drive our robot, and did not have to swap them out once. They lasted from the beginning of the AZ regional to the end of Nationals. I think most teams ran into problems because they did not keep the axle going into the drill motor load free

No most teams had problems because they followed the rules that First gave us and ended up destroying the motors.
Yeah our motors are really holding out really well after we had to send out replacements because I thought it was a good idea to get every little detail done on that robot since we were ahead. Bad idea since First changed the rules a week later.

[WakeZero]

Originally posted by wysiswyg
No most teams had problems because they followed the rules that First gave us and ended up destroying the motors.
Yeah our motors are really holding out really well after we had to send out replacements because I thought it was a good idea to get every little detail done on that robot since we were ahead. Bad idea since First changed the rules a week later.

What rule?

[Jared Russell]

The motors were just fine.

The motor mounts were crap...we had so much torque going through our drive that we would actually end up spinning the drill motors in their mounts until the brushes shattered and were spit out. Eventually we made an aluminum cross-support to hold the motor in place and we haven't had any problems since.

[Adam Y.]

The motor mounts were crap...we had so much torque going through our drive that we would actually end up spinning the drill motors in their mounts until the brushes shattered and were spit out.

Are you sure you assembled the drill and transmission correctly. Look inside the drill transmissions and look at the face. There is two ways they can mesh. One way is with those semi circles and the other way is with the actual circles. If you use the semi circles eventually the motors will torque a little bit and move a bit. If you use the cicrular holes the drill motors will stay put.

What rule?

The rule that said you had to switch out the smaller wires on the motors for larger ones.

[Jared Russell]

Honestly I'm not exactly sure...I was control system guy. The above represents my best understanding of what happened to our drill motors.

I'm not too sure which way we put them in (I'm assuming we tried both...), but I'm happy that we fixed it

[ebenhopwil]

the drills were pretty good. the clips fell out once, but that was fixed by few zipties. our team also broke a few drive train pins, because of all the torque. Now, those were annoying to fix.

[gburlison]

We had no new problems with these drill motors. Like every year, it seems the tabs are to small for 10 gauge wire. As for the motor mounts, even after over torquing one of the bolts and cracking one of the mounts, they never failed during competition. I like the new motors and transmissions and welcome the additional power. I say give me four next year.

[Jonathanb]

We had no problems except that the clutch kept shifting but a few cable ties fixed that.

[team222badbrad]

The new motors and gearboxes are great!!!

After the first week and a half we found out that the FIRST motor mounts were worthless for us. We broke them.... They also do not act as heat sinks

We are lucky because we encountered the problems early in the game and found simple ways to fix the problems.

I think the main reason why the wires became unsoldered is because teams used the plastic mounts which do not disperse the heat.

We changed out 1 motor and 1 gearbox on the left side of our bot during nationals only because our chain got bound up.

(we ran the same gearboxes and motors during testing, 3 regionals and the practice rounds of Nationals)