smoking drill motors?

[Joshua May]

My team just had this problem last night. We were driving the robot around for some testing, and about 3-4 minutes of driving it around on a cement area in the middle of our school, we noticed smoke from the motors. We checked it out and there was definitely smoke coming from the motors and a very strong smell of it. We have one large muffin fan mounted above each drill motor, although we noticed a large amount of escaped airflow, we thought this might be the problem, so today we are going to fabricate some air ducts. Does anyone else have any suggestions? We did not disassemble the motors and I do not believe there was any drilling on the chassis around the motors.

Also, we noticed that there was a lag with one wheel, so it skips three or four times at acceleration and then moves slower than the other wheel as we drive around. I know that the other wheel's gearbox is greased up, and this one's isn't. Does anyone know what else might cause this problem?

[Al Skierkiewicz]

This is very typical of some designs. You do not say what your configuraion is so I am going to assume four wheel tank or two wheel with non steering two front wheel. These types of drive systems use incredible amounts of current when turning. Again, if there is any friction in your drive train it will manifest itself as high current in the drill motors. Can you describe the drive train or include a picture?

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

This is very typical of some designs. You do not say what your configuraion is so I am going to assume four wheel tank or two wheel with non steering two front wheel. These types of drive systems use incredible amounts of current when turning. Again, if there is any friction in your drive train it will manifest itself as high current in the drill motors. Can you describe the drive train or include a picture?

We have vertically mounted drill motors, connected to the kit's gearbox with a 2:1 gear ratio. The output axle of the gearbox runs to one of the kit's 12.5" pneumatic wheels. I will try to get a picture up soon, I have none with me at the moment.

Thanks for your help.

[jjv]

Originally Posted by HHSJosh

We have vertically mounted drill motors, connected to the kit's gearbox with a 2:1 gear ratio. The output axle of the gearbox runs to one of the kit's 12.5" pneumatic wheels. I will try to get a picture up soon, I have none with me at the moment.

Thanks for your help.

Do you have your gear boxes aligned so that when the bot is going forward, both motors are going in their forward direction? Or is one going forward and the other in reverse? If this is the case, that would explain the lag between the two wheels. These motors are more efficient when run in the forward direction, so if one runs opposite the other it will do so unevenly.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by jjv

Do you have your gear boxes aligned so that when the bot is going forward, both motors are going in their forward direction? Or is one going forward and the other in reverse? If this is the case, that would explain the lag between the two wheels. These motors are more efficient when run in the forward direction, so if one runs opposite the other it will do so unevenly.

I will make sure to check up on this when I get to the robot. We will check once more on the driving and then I will see about this, I hope it's not too hard of a fix...

[ECarlson]

Our 2001 drill motors would smoke quickly whenever we stalled them (like driving into a wall, and maintaining full power to the motors). The 2004 motors are different, but I suspect they would do the same.