Drive Train design roadblocks

[Matt Adams]

Originally Posted by Adam Shapiro

I figured no more than 60A per side as the main breaker can only handle 120.

Ah... this is a great time to throw some information out there. This is a Matt Adams story about engineering, tears and tragedy. I hope you have Kleenex.

461 was running 4 motors all designed around keeping them around the 40A mark and we had no problems... we were drawing around 150A pretty regularly without problems... until we ran over a dozen back to back matches in the finals at nationals. Despite the fact of this untimeliness, they held up very well above listed capacity for said reasons. (Hint: Keep circuit breaker cool.)

Overall, don't worry about the 120A breaker. Check out the spec sheet. It has no problem going 30% beyond that for 20 seconds or so. You typically won't be tripping that in a match, or even back to back matches if you make an effort to keep them cool.

The 40A breakers, however, I think are much less forgiving. I would be much more concerned about keeping these guys in check. My advice is to design your motors and loads evenly around the 40A breakers.

Good luck!

Matt