P60 planetaries gearboxes

[banebots]

In response to post #13 by Jacob Plicque

The same problem could exist on all of our planetary gearboxes. In general there is only so much room for the pinion; if the pinion extends beyond it, the gearbox will bind or jam when the screws holding it together are tightened. The measurement should be similar for the 42mm gearboxes. It is likely a little less for the 36mm gearboxes – we will need to look it up.

In response to post #14 by RyanS

The corner holes are 0.59 inch from the center line of the gearbox. If you prefer polar coordinates, center of holes is 0.840 inch from the center of the gearbox, holes are 90deg apart. Knowing that a picture will be much more helpful, we will try and get the drawing updated as soon as possible.

BaneBots

[travis]

I pressed on the pinions with two 0.005" shims to keep the back from bottoming on the motor boss. Three out of four pinions were still ~0.6" proud of the front of the motor case. I filed all the faces to just under 0.57" and now all of the motors (including a RS-454/256:1 combo) draw <5 amps, no load. With the stock RS-454 shaft and the FP motor shaft cut to the same length, the end of the motor shaft was still recessed below the pinion face with that ammount of filing. If you don't have acess to shim stock, a piece of paper is about 0.003" thick.

Thanks to Banebots for speaking with me at length on the phone the other day, offering several suggestions to combat my issue.

Travis

[nnfuller]

The FP motors come with a gear attached to their shaft do you have to swap out the gear on the end of the shaft to get it to work?

[Ice Berg]

Yes, you have to swap out the pinion gear with the 3.2 mm shaft pinions from banebots. You also have to shorten the shafts on the fisher prices.

[FJJ III]

Any updates on the 3" shaft availability?

Also, we have some of the 5mm pinions for the 42mm gearboxes still. Will these work for the new P60 gearboxes?

[banebots]

The 3” shafts are now available as well as 4.5” blank shafts for making your own.

All the old 42mm pinions will work with the new P60 gearboxes.

BaneBots

[FJJ III]

Great! Thanks!

[FJJ III]

Any news on when replacement parts will be available for these gearboxes?

Also, any chance that the back mounting plate can be revised to have four motor mounting holes instead of just the two? This was easy to fix on the 42mm gearboxes, but the material is cut away on the P60's, making it trickier

[David Guzman]

Now that "most" competitions are over and everyone had plenty of run time on their P60 gearboxes. I want to hear some comments about their performance at different loads.

How did you use your planetaries? What motor?
How did it perform? Any issues? (even if minor)

Any input you can give from you personal experience will be appreciated. I am looking into using some of these for a personal project and would like to hear from the CD community first.

Thanks.


Dave

[Billfred]

1618 used ours on our dumper and intake rollers, 64:1s (I think) straight to an AndyMark key hub screwed to a PVC end cap screwed to our roller. We used the 545 motor, and had no problems with the gearboxes through the course of Palmetto.

[Adam Freeman]

67 used a P60 (64:1) with RS-545 on the conveyor that feed from the hopper to the shooter. We used this combination to replace a face mounted modified globe motor, to increase available torque.

We experienced no issues with the P60 gearboxes we used through 5 complete competitions. In my opinion the these gearboxes were great in the application we put them in....compact, light weight, easy to assemble, and easy to mount.

We had to replace (4) RS-545 motors during the season, and with a spare P60/RS-545 combo ready to go we could swap them out in about 2 minutes.

[Donut]

Our team used these at a 64:1 ratio with the RS-545 motors, with one on each side of our robot as drive motors. We opted to move our CIMs to our intake and shooting mechanism and remove some of them for weight, and these guys easily handled driving the robot. There were no failures and we did not replace them once even though we used them from week 4 of build season through the end of the Arizona Regional. Two small muffin fans were used on each motor to help make sure they ran cooler but this was mainly a precaution since these small motors (which we had never used before) were being driven for 2 minutes straight more or less.

The only complaint we had was that our robot ended up driving a little on the slow side, but this was due to problems in obtaining correct sprocket sizes, nothing to do with the P60s or RS-545s. Mounting was pretty straightforward and with the longer shaft sizes now available these gearboxes are even more convenient than before. Overall these were a solid choice and I'd recommend using them again.