Circuit breakers

[archiver]

Posted by Eric Rasmussen.

Engineer from FIRST.

Posted on 8/1/2000 12:59 PM MST



Hi all.

I need to ask your opinion on the use of 20 versus 30 amp breakers for the motors. Tom Frank suggested to me that a 20 amp auto-resetting breaker does a good job of protecting the Fisher-Price motors from burning themselves up. Looking at the set of motors in the kit in 2000, it would therefore seem logical to replace all the breakers with 20 amp breakers, with the exception of continuing to use 30 amp breakers on the drill motors.

Naturally, this might lead to some teams experiencing additional breaker trips during matches, while hopefully extending the life of the motors. My question is whether or not teams, on the whole, would prefer this extra level of safety, or if it would be better to continue to allow teams to burn up motors while gaining some extra short-term performance.

What do you think? (We need to decide this quickly so that we can order the parts and get them in time to pack the kits.)

Thanks,

-Eric