Does anyone know what actually happened...?

[Adam Y.]

to the team that had their robot smoke twice? Just curious because our robot was actually the one that helped it go poof. Quite sad seeing it happen a second time during the semifinals. It was a amazing robot.

[Ryan Curry]

Hey,
If your talking about teh competition on Long Island, the team you are referring to was team 311 from East Islip. In a qualifying match and in the semi-finals they burned out 2 drill motors on their drive train, each time. On Saturday they went through 4 drill motors, and smoked the place out both times. Hope this helps.

-Rc

[Adam Y.]

Ooo man that was worst than I first thought. They smoked both their drill motors not just one on a side. Wow. Does anyone know why that happened?

[Joe Johnson]

This sounds to me like a case of too much current and too little ratio.

100 Amps can start almost any motor on fire, given time.

Joe J.

[Adam Y.]

Sorry moderator should have put this in another post. Yes this is what happened.

[Brian C]

Actually Ryan we only burned up 1 motor each of the times it happened. Not that big a deal in the sense that we can change out a motor in about 5 or 10 minutes.

Joe, you hit the nail on the head!

To much traction + to "tall" a gear ratio = SMOKE!


Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want!

But I do have to say that Team #311 The RedJammers are very honored to be awarded the Regional Chairmans award from the SBPLI Regional.

See you in Fla.

Now lessee...If I duct tape the motors maybe that will stop the smoke from leaking out, or maybe some silicon sealer - yeah that'll do it!

[Adam Y.]

Were they two differnt motors on each side? You probably burnt both out in the first match and didn't realize it because only one had smoked. There was no reason why your robot's motor hould have acted that weirdly pushing the goal in the semi's unless one of the motors was damaged. Traction is one tricky thing to get correctly.

[foursixnine]

Oooh, smoking motors, not good. If it's only your gear ratio that's the problem it should be a pretty simple fix, just a matter if swapping the final drive sprockets. This reminds me of a team at GLR that had a fog machine under their cart. It looked as though their robot was billowing off smoke. The first time they brought their machine out to the field the ref's started coming over with fire extinguishers thinking the robot was on fire. It was pretty funny.