Mixing Jaguars and Victors

[Rob Stehlik]

Actually, I don't think this would be as bad as you think. The motors are mechanically coupled in the toughbox, so they will run at the same speed regardless. The only issue would be unequal sharing of the load, but I suspect that due to differences in motors the load is never perfectly balanced, even with identical speed controllers. They key obviously is to have the Victor and Jaguar run the motors in the same direction
On that note, I would say that the way things are done in FIRST is far from ideal. In industry, you would typically see a single motor sized large enough to handle the load. Or you might come across multiple motors connected in parallel to the same driver. Or motors electronically synchronized with encoders. But having separate drivers control two mechanically coupled motors is really asking for trouble. All it takes is a wrong connection or incorrect code to run the motors in opposite directions, which would stall both of them. And when motors stall, bad things happen.