pic: 2012 frc971 transmission

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Is there any measurable benefit to the fan above the CIMs?

I don't have any experience with them on CIMs, but I added one to the KOP air compressor on our demo bot and it dropped the running temperature and idle cooling time significantly. We had been having issues where the compressor would get so hot from running constantly it would melt the hose coming out of it (causing an "explosive" loss of pressure). Since adding the fan we have yet to see such a problem occur again, even after a 5+ hour demo that was outside on a hot day and in direct sunlight.


Somewhat related, on this years robot we used two FisherPrice (I think) motors to run our shooter system. We had been having an issue where after moderate use, the motors would heat up and then, the lower one in particular, would stall when trying to shoot a ball. The motor had been mounted to the robot using an aluminum collar we made for it (which covered about 60% of the motors surface area and was roughly 3/4" thick). To fix the problem, I took the collar off and cut small groves around it (like a computer heat-sync, and since putting it back on the robot we have yet to have the launcher stall on us again.


I could see a fan on a CIM being useful particularly in elimination rounds where you have a lot of matches close together with very short breaks between them. In years past our motors have gotten very hot (one year we even used a can of compressed air upside-down to cool down our drive motors) during finals, so an active cooling system could be a good way to alieviate such problems and maybe squeak out that little extra bit of performance during the most important matches.



TL/DR version: Temperature matters, cooler running motors will perform better.