pic: Team 954 Preview: Heavy duty Master Link

[WakeZero]

Originally Posted by dhoffman

Thanks again for all of your concern - as you can all probably tell our team is still very rookie in nature. As far as the sprockets go, we are using smaller one's on the "real robot" - and just for your general info the picture shown does have reduction, it's something like 45 to 30 or around that area. Now, since our motors have not been totally mounted on the finalized design and we could gain more space by not having the second pillow block, since we have two differning opinions on the neccessity of an additional pillow block, could an additional person (or a few?) please clear up if we need an additional pillow block or not?

It is always a good engineering habit to take the side load off of your motors. Without the second pillow block, what happens is that your motor is now being pulled from side to side. This is often the number one reason for the magic smoke

One pillow block on each side of your sprocket will save your motors a lot of stress

Here is what we did last year to show you what I mean: