Tripping breakers

[JoelP]

Yeah, just make sure you have enough torque to spin the wheels against a wall and you should be fine. Gear your drivetrain to give you the balance between torque and speed that you find best suits your design/strategy, but the maximum would be determined by the above test.

[eugenebrooks]

Proper gearing, and the use of a two speed gearbox if the game requires it, will minimize breaker tripping. Although it is true that you don't need any more torque than is required to slip the wheels, some games have involved picking up heavy goals with attendant increases in traction. We will know if this is the case when we see the kickoff this year.

Should your eventual robot design run into a breaker tripping problem, you can sort through your available breakers by testing pairs of them in series, using a NiCd battery or two for power and LEDs to indicate the breaker that tripped first in each comparison. The actual trip currents for the breakers varies a bit and every extra bit of current margin helps.

Eugene