2017 Drive Train

[Cothron Theiss]

Originally Posted by dardeshna

On a slightly different note, what motor / gearing / wheel size setup are you all using? Ideal feet per second I would imagine is relatively high. Shifting or no shifting? We are leaning towards 6 cim ~10-12 fps no shifting but I don't have great experience to tell if we got it in the right range or not for this game.

Wheel size: small as you can reasonably get them. I personally see no good reason to have drive wheels larger than 4". Lower ground clearance, less reduction, and less overall torque in the system is always a good thing. The only downside is that your wheels will wear more quickly. I imagine the <4" and 4" hex bore Colson wheels will be very popular this year.

Motors: my go-to combination is 4 CIMs & 2 MiniCIMs.

Gearing: I am usually an advocate for single speed gearboxes, and I still think you can't go wrong with them this year. My issues with shifters is that most teams are not able to fully realize the benefits of their shifting gearbox; whether that's because of poor design, a game that doesn't need two-speeds, insufficient driver practice or just mistakes in the engineering process, they're adding weight, cost and complexity and not getting much in return. However, this year is a good year for shifting gearboxes if you go that route. you have long open stretches of field you need to get across quickly and you have tight spaces where you need to push defenders out of the way. I have not done any of the math yet to really figure out sprint distances and distance to reach full speed, so I'm just guessing on the numbers themselves. But for this game, I'd say:

12 ft/s for a single speed gearbox
8 & 14 ft/s for a two-speed gearbox.