What else do we want?

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Posted by Joe Johnson.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 7/5/2000 3:02 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: 60 amp fuse problems... posted by James Jones on 7/5/2000 11:19 AM MST:



Okay, here's the deal.

As it turns out, three 30 Amp circuit breakers in parrallel will trip before the one 60 Amp fuse. This fact was experimentally determined using a big power supply and an even bigger potentiometer ;-).

So, knowing this fact, you can build from legal kit materials a device that can be put in series with the 60 Amp fuse that has the purpose of protecting the 60 Amp fuse.

The effect of this device is to trade a death sentence for a 2 second reboot of the Robot Interface. Not a bad deal.

The reason that I need to write a 'white paper' on the topic is that it is a bit tricky to actually wire the 3 circuit breakers in parallel.

Actually, we made a few of the devices at the Nationals that plugged between the battery and the robot that we used as 'loaners' for teams having 60 Amp fuse problems. They worked like a charm.

Joe J.

P.S. It has not been my experience that fuses get 'old' after hard useage. I have seen a few 'semi-melted' fuses, but even they seemed to be functioning just fine, it was only inspection that made them know to us, not performance.