pic: Team 188 Closer Look

[Karthik]

Congratulations to Woburn for once again creating a fabulous gearbox. For those who aren't familiar with team 188, this will be their third consecutive year using a six motor drive system. The addition of the shifter makes them even more dangerous.

How has it been performing during the testing? Has the new chain held up well?

I look forward to facing you guys in Pittsburgh and Toronto. Wow, it sure will be weird being on the other side.

[Steve W]

We also do not believe that there will be tons of pushing. Speed and precision are what will be important. Shifting gears will allow both. If and when power is needed ...... If you think that pushing will not be important, what would you be doing if someone where trying to uncap your goal or cap theirs for the win?

[jonathan lall]

Originally Posted by Karthik

Wow, it sure will be weird being on the other side.

You and Ian can always do something about that you know . your swerve/strafe drive is pretty freaking impressive too.

Thanks everyone for the commentary. Let me just address a few things. First, you are all welcome to take a look at the regionals, I'd be happy to explain it, and get into an argument as to why it'll work . From experience, we have found that blowing breakers is very rare, and in fact we never did last year, despite having a non-shifting three-motor box. While there are hungrier F-Ps this year, we believe the ability to shift in conjunction with the backup battery keeping our controller on, will allow us to not overtax ourselves in matches. max is absolutely correct in saying that the three motors should not peak, because their current draw at that level is far higher than the motors will ever take. The gears are optomized and mated in such a way that something near the peak efficiency of each motor is used. The current is equally distributed. As a result, we will be able to get slightly more pushing power at the same amount of draw, divided over three motors; it won't be a full 'motor's worth' more, but it'll be enough to seriously mess with teams that thought they were powerful. According to the current curves, after about 10-15 seconds at stall in high gear, our robot will probably nuke itself, but we do not expect this to happen in normal match activities. It was also mentioned that versus a two-motor gearbox, we are not overtaxing our breakers, but the other robot will be. We will prevail. Bottom line, six-motor drive is a tried and true method for Woburn (although I have seen two other teams do it). Ask anyone at West Michigan or Toronto and they'll agree. Just try pushing us.

As it happens, we don't believe a huge amount of pushing will occur this year. That doesn't mean in our minds that we shouldn't be able to do it. Maybe more on the gearbox later from the source, but we'd like to keep a little mystery .

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

You and Ian can always do something about that you know . your swerve/strafe drive is pretty freaking impressive too.

Thanks everyone for the commentary. Let me just address a few things. First, you are all welcome to take a look at the regionals, I'd be happy to explain it, and get into an argument as to why it'll work . From experience, we have found that blowing breakers is very rare, and in fact we never did last year, despite having a non-shifting three-motor box. While there are hungrier F-Ps this year, we believe the ability to shift in conjunction with the backup battery keeping our controller on, will allow us to not overtax ourselves in matches. max is absolutely correct in saying that the three motors should not peak, because their current draw at that level is far higher than the motors will ever take. The gears are optomized and mated in such a way that something near the peak efficiency of each motor is used. The current is equally distributed. As a result, we will be able to get slightly more pushing power at the same amount of draw, divided over three motors; it won't be a full 'motor's worth' more, but it'll be enough to seriously mess with teams that thought they were powerful. According to the current curves, after about 10-15 seconds at stall in high gear, our robot will probably nuke itself, but we do not expect this to happen in normal match activities. It was also mentioned that versus a two-motor gearbox, we are not overtaxing our breakers, but the other robot will be. We will prevail. Bottom line, six-motor drive is a tried and true method for Woburn (although I have seen two other teams do it). Ask anyone at West Michigan or Toronto and they'll agree. Just try pushing us.

As it happens, we don't believe a huge amount of pushing will occur this year. That doesn't mean in our minds that we shouldn't be able to do it. Maybe more on the gearbox later from the source, but we'd like to keep a little mystery .

I concur. In addition to all your comments I will add that it is almost impossible to trip the main breaker with the battery we have -- really.

As to whether 3 motors per side with a shifting transmission is needed, that is a topic for another discussion. Awesome job of engineering regardless of whether or not you acually need all that power.

Joe J.

[Andrew Rosselet]

Originally Posted by Karthik

The addition of the shifter makes them even more dangerous.

So it has finally been noticed- our capability to shift.

Let's all point and stare, and then pat Tristan on the back for an amazing job

[Hinkel Y.]

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

... As a result, we will be able to get slightly more pushing power at the same amount of draw, divided over three motors; it won't be a full 'motor's worth' more, but it'll be enough to seriously mess with teams that thought they were powerful. According to the current curves, after about 10-15 seconds at stall in high gear, our robot will probably nuke itself, but we do not expect this to happen in normal match activities. It was also mentioned that versus a two-motor gearbox, we are not overtaxing our breakers, but the other robot will be. We will prevail. Bottom line, six-motor drive is a tried and true method for Woburn (although I have seen two other teams do it). Ask anyone at West Michigan or Toronto and they'll agree. Just try pushing us.

As it happens, we don't believe a huge amount of pushing will occur this year. That doesn't mean in our minds that we shouldn't be able to do it. Maybe more on the gearbox later from the source, but we'd like to keep a little mystery .

I don't think the chain might break, but there's always a small possibility in low gear... Like last year for example, our three motor gearbox with our 25 chain was really weak... If you've seen us last year, every few matches, there was at least one chain broken and 3 at one point I think.

Good luck to everyone with their bot with only 6 days left...

[Yan Wang]

Team 639 will bring extra chains

[thoughtful]

25 mm chain saves a lot of weight, though i hope it doesnt break. We will have our pockets full with chains