1726 Electric Problem

[Matt H.]

As anyone who watched the Arizona webcast (or was at the regional) knows team 1726 put on a great show, but would intermittently stop working. We believe this is an electrical problem (something we have never encountered before). When the robot stops working the victor lights turn off and the victor fans stop, but the pneumatics system and compressor continue to run and operate. Jostling the robot will result in the victors receiving power for an intermittent amount of time before the robot dies again. This originally led me to believe that the problem was a loose connection in the maxi fuse panel wiring (from power distribution to fuse panel to victors back to power distribution), but after re tightening all the connections the problem persists. There is no obvious evidence of a short such as melted wires and when examined the connecting wires appear to be in excellent condition.

Even more confusing when operating with the robot on blocks we are unable to recreate the problem.

So now I have several questions

Could this be a problem with our forty amp breakers, on Thursday we used nitrile tread and due to the high torque tripped our breakers continuously for several matches before recognizing and fixing the problem. Is it possible that some of the breakers are now damaged and trip very easily? It seems strange that all four would fail at once (as we observed however tripping one breaker could result in others tripping as we use two motors/gearbox) and that bumping the robot would reset them, does anyone think this is the problem?

If the above could not be the problem how would you recommend we trouble shoot. A multimeter simply isn't enough because it is highly possible that we have conductivity, but not enough current carrying capacity. Is there a proper way to trouble shoot this situation?