pic: Two Motor, 4WD

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

Regarding the CIMs, am I overlooking a spacer somewhere, or have you constrained the front of the CIMs' raised centre protrusion (you know, the 0.750" one with the shaft in the middle—what's this called, anyway?) to the surface of the plate? You probably want the faceplate of the motor to sit flush instead, and to leave a hole for the centre protrusion.

And upon a second look, I think I see the problem: if the faceplate of the motor were constrained to the surface of the gearbox plate, the tip of the motor shaft might interfere with the second stage of gears. If that's really the case—and I'm not being fooled by some trick of perspective (it sucks when you can't just rotate the picture and look underneath!)—you can either use a spacer, widen the gearbox, or cut the shaft. I'd probably go with widening the gearbox, unless space is an issue, because the spacer will likely give you another component to add complexity and misalignment to the assembly, and if you avoid cutting the shaft, it means that when you really, really, need to change a blown motor for the next match, you can just borrow one from me and install it, rather than having to run around trying to find a hacksaw with which to modify the shaft. Actually, there's another option which may or may not work; that's to rearrange the gears so that this shaft doesn't interfere—but this may necessitate a change of ratio, or idlers, or other more involved changes.