pic: KING TeC 2169 Lift Gear

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by llamadon

What happened was our operator and driver were pushing for a faster cycle time, and I believe the operator had driven the elevator down and stalled the gearbox in this haste.

It sounds to me like you have no software developed to avoid stall conditions like this. In the future, I'd recommend installing sensors so that your motors don't cause harm to your machine. Limit switches, reed switches, and Hall effect sensors are popular choices.

Also, you should be able to use the new RoboRIO to gather current draw data from the motors and to shut them down if they exceed a certain value in case your elevator is getting caught on something else.

[AustinH]

Also, in addition to using sensors to stop your lift, be sure to have said sensors included in autonomous. Otherwise, you can have bad things happen to your robot. Case in point: http://i.imgur.com/jTXfc1l.jpg

That's a 10:1 stage from a versaplanetary. We had to start an autonomous mode with our elevator down at the bottom of the robot. In teleop, we have a limit switch that stops the motor from applying downward force on the elevator. It was never included in autonomous because the elevator was never intended to travel anywhere near the bottom of the robot. Needless to say, bad things happened.

(Special shoutout to 3663 CPR for the assist. We were up and running for the next qualification match like nothing had happened.)