Disk brakes

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

Last year IFI pointed out that the jumpers on the speed controllers could be wired to a digital IO port, allowing you to control in software the mode the speed controller was in. It made sense last year, as a team would have been able to enable brake mode, if the robot started to go in the direction opposite the one it was heading in as the match ended (WHILE DISABLED!). That is, you could have the robot coast up the ramp, and then not slide back down (if the dynamic brake was strong enough).

And you had enough traction.


The essential point that I was making is that the Victor brakes are almost always good for use in a drive-train in FIRST. I'm willing to bet that one of the robots involved in the pushing match (either yours or the robot trying to push you) will lose traction before the motors back-drive in brake mode. Especially considering a vast majority of pushing doesn't occur head on (a great deal of it is rotational in the world of FIRST, something that a braking mechanism that locks the wheels won't help with). If you want a system to prevent torqued out of position, it would have to be in contact with the playing field rather than the wheels.
Mechanical brakes (such as disk brakes) may be a valid solution for other aspects of the robot, such as arm and shoulder joints.