Victor 884 won't go forward

[Manoel]

Originally Posted by Mike Betts

Manoel,

Be advised that I have been mentoring Team 177 since 1995 (before IFI and the Victor existed). We use between 7 and 11 Victors per robot and some years we build two robots.

We have only failed two Victors in all that time. Both failed due to metal shavings falling into the FET heat sink assemblies (beneath the fan).

If I were you I would re-look at the "dead" Victors during the off season...

My students have reported many "failed" parts that were not failed. Bad or loose PWM connections are the primary electrical reason for these reported "failures". Other "causes" have been mechanical binding of the motor, software and cables/wires going where they shouldn't.

In my humble opinion, the Victor is a highly reliable part.

Regards,

Mike

Mike,

Thanks for your advice, but we are very thorough when analyzing a Victor (as I pointed out in my description - I'm not sure there's anything else we can test on this one) and labeling it defective.
I agree that they are very reliable items, but we have had some tough luck before.
I remember only ONE Victor blowing up because of metal shavings. We have some old Victors (the one with stickers on the bottom with calibration procedures), some really old Victors (the ones that required external capacitors) that simply refuse to work. We have received TWO Victors from the Kit that were DOA - the cost and time to send it back turned them into fancy paper weights.
We also have had one Victor blow up straight from the box, mounted in a Lexan board with absolutely no metal shavings.
What intrigues me is this weird kind of failure, refusing to work forward. I had never seen something like that and don't recall ever seeing it on CD.
Again, I'm open to suggestions.