VEXPro 2014 Product Initial Impressions

[drwisley]

Originally Posted by Cory

These are all super trivial complaints and have no bearing on the functionality of the product. Why would you expect anything other than the bearing that is currently in the gear to fit perfectly (for the record, we loctite every bearing we press)?

How much clearance do you run for a 1.125 flanged bearing? Did this change with the loctite? I seem to recall you using some small fasteners to retain bearings as well. Any insight would be appreciated.

[magnets]

These are all super trivial complaints and have no bearing on the functionality of the product.

Yes, they do. Having to remove the plate to remove a shaft to remove a CIM motor is a little silly, just because the retaining ring is a little big, but I don't really see how this can be fixed.

Why would you expect anything other than the bearing that is currently in the gear to fit perfectly (for the record, we loctite every bearing we press)?

Because it's advertised with a 1.125" bearing bore, not with a hex bearing pressed in with locktite. And besides, having a flanged bearing with the flange just sitting out in the middle of nowhere isn't "fitting perfectly" to begin with.
When we bought our gear, it said nowhere that a bearing would come with it. I'm not complaining about our free hex bearing, but we planned on putting a not-hex bearing in the gear.
Normally we use 1.1245 holes, because at that size, there isn't much slop in the fit. The vex bearing bore on one gear was 1.13.

Have you really seen a dog fail because the teeth didn't have radiused corners? I haven't. The weakest portion of a dog is the threaded hole. If anything the corner that you want radiused is at the base of the tooth, not the vertical edges. We have run unradiused edge dogs with zero issue.

I'm not sure my first post was clear. I'm talking about a radius between the horizontal surface of the dog, and the vertical surface used to transfer torque to the gear.

Yes, our kicker in 2010. The problem went away after using a ball nose endmill.

Do you really use an endmill with no radius to cut your dog gears?


Again-I think vex products are among the best we've seen from an FRC supplier, but I'm just curious as to why some parts are the way they are.

[Alex Cormier]

I am slightly disappointed in the 6" mecanums. We bought a set in hopes to get the better traction then the AM ones. But within only 2 hours of driving and testing, we have numerous rollers that the axle/pin have come very loose. The Return On Investment of these wheels are horrible. We have since switched over to a set from AM, but have lost 4 lbs in the process of doing so.

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by Alex Cormier

I am slightly disappointed in the 6" mecanums. We bought a set in hopes to get the better traction then the AM ones. But within only 2 hours of driving and testing, we have numerous rollers that the axle/pin have come very loose. The Return On Investment of these wheels are horrible. We have since switched over to a set from AM, but have lost 4 lbs in the process of doing so.

I can tell you with certainty that is not normal. Something is wrong. Please contact VEX support and we can get you straightened out.

[tim-tim]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

I can tell you with certainty that is not normal. Something is wrong. Please contact VEX support and we can get you straightened out.

Paul, we noticed the same thing on both of our robots. We kind of shrugged it off to how the wheels "wear in", as it is our first time using the VEXpro Mecanums. For us, I would say it was more like majority of the rollers felt extremely loose.

We haven't noticed any performance issues; but now concerned with the reliability of the wheels if you are saying this isn't normal.

[Paul Copioli]

Originally Posted by tim-tim

Paul, we noticed the same thing on both of our robots. We kind of shrugged it off to how the wheels "wear in", as it is our first time using the VEXpro Mecanums. For us, I would say it was more like majority of the rollers felt extremely loose.

We haven't noticed any performance issues; but now concerned with the reliability of the wheels if you are saying this isn't normal.

If you haven't noticed any performance issues, then you probably don't have the same thing happening that Alex reported, however if you e-mail VEXpro support they can help you determine what is going on.

Paul

[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

I can tell you with certainty that is not normal. Something is wrong. Please contact VEX support and we can get you straightened out.

Will do, we also ordered 10 jaguars the other week, when we opened the box to use them this weekend. We noticed that 5 were not operational.

Originally Posted by T^2

There's been a lot of moaning and groaning about IFI's poor customer service (for good reason, as my team has experienced), but let's leave that for another thread.

The shipping delays were bad for a lot of teams, but IFI and WCP have had nothing but the best customer service during the course of this season so far. They did everything in their power to get teams their parts as quickly as possible, given the low inventory they had a large mass of orders to tend to, and have been very transparent to teams about the given situation. To blatantly call out their customer service and degrade it (especially in a thread where you claim your only intent is product performance) is not only disrespectful, but also embarrassing to see from one of the top California teams.

[IndySam]

VersaPlanetaries are still the biggest game changer for our team in several years. The improvements this year make it even better.

The large selection of quality aluminum gears are a close second.

The inventory problems are a pain in the you-know-what but they show how the products from Vex and AM have really changed our sport. I'm excited to see what teams are doing with this stuff this year.

[techtiger1]

All of this supports my thought that FRC has become too reliant on COTS items.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by techtiger1

All of this supports my thought that FRC has become too reliant on COTS items.

Maybe you're right. Ideally all teams would have access to a mill and lathe and have some ways to slide into Plan B if certain items become unavailable.

[donkehote]

Originally Posted by techtiger1

All of this supports my thought that FRC has become too reliant on COTS items.

this is a problem why?

Raising the floor makes all the events more exciting, and its nice to see the ability for many teams to more "easily" make a robot that drives, but also has some sort of function.

I think the large array of COTS parts are great. Il add a review of 5031's vex experience once we get the rest of the parts we need to actually use them. (could have been delivered on the weekend, or yesterday, i don't know, haven't been at the school.

[Steven Smith]

Originally Posted by techtiger1

All of this supports my thought that FRC has become too reliant on COTS items.

I know this was intended to be somewhat sarcastic, but to those concerned about the impact of COTS on FRC (I'm not one)... these comments remind me there there is still a huge amount of value to building team resources that can machine components and do internal testing.

There is always room for improvement. For example, the VersaChassis tolerances aren't tight enough such that you can just slap rivets on a frame and magically get a perfectly square chassis. We had ~1/8" of runout at 1ft from square after the freshman rivet team had their fun. It probably would have worked, but I had them drill them all out, showed them how to assemble it square, match drill, watch that they weren't twisting the frame as they riveted, etc. Now we are < 1/32" runout at 1ft.

That being said, when the Versa 2x1" was out of stock, our team priced regular 2x1" stock at a local supply house. Same price. Meaning, VEXPro is already beating them on VALUE. Sure they can charge me double for the frame to tighten the tolerances up a bit to make it foolproof, or I can be less foolish.

Same thing goes for other products. I remember reading about motor failures (BAG?) because people were side-loading or thrust loading motor shafts that were never spec'd for those loads. I can either demand VEX make a "more robust" motor that has additional weight and size with internal bearings able to take more abuse... or I can not abuse it.

Another one for us was Delrin washers. We figured out pretty quick that the 1/16" or 1/8" spacers weren't a great value (for us), as we're lucky enough to have a laser cutter that can run 300 to a sheet for 10% of the cost. Not everyone has a 30W laser cutter though. Even then, the thicker ones bloomed too much and the 2" thick spacers were a better value than spanning a several inch gap with a bucket of 1/8" spacers. Same goes for machining, many teams with "free" student/mentor machining time can create parts from raw stock cheaper than VEX. I'm sure VEX would be perfectly willing to sell parts more cheaply to FRC if you will supply them with the parts at a consistent tolerance and free labor to make thousands of them each year.

Back to the OP:
Long story short, if you want to hop on CD to criticize VEXPro (or AM, or any of our other suppliers that cater to FRC)... you would be well off to word your posts more positively. I may share some frustrations, but I also understand what is and is not realistic to expect of both the equipment and the companies at the pricing we receive parts at.

[Brandon Holley]

Thus far we have been very impressed with the VP parts we've received.

The 2X1 versatube is just freakin' awesome stuff. I love the 0.100" wall for weight savings and the ability to stuff a pulley inside.

We used several of the 15mm HTD pulleys (24T and 36T), as well as a few belt sizes. The parts are all obviously very high quality. We of course love the black anodize of the pulleys, but the fact that we didnt need to machine off hubs, or broach them ourselves is just a giant PLUS in our book.

The gears are very high quality as well. The drivetrain all assembled very smoothly, and runs extremely smoothly with very little noticeable friction in the system. Our drive train subteam was extremely happy with the setup.

Some photos below showing our implementation.

-Brando

[Ian Curtis]

Having never purchased VexPro parts before, extremely impressed with the Versaplanetaries. Gave one of our with-it a freshman a shipping box and a bucket of grease, told him where the Vex website was, and an hour later we had gearboxes! I love the options you have... ordered stages intending one set of ratios and actually built a separate set of ratios.

The CIM to VP also gave us an excuse to cut down some really banged up CIM output shafts.

There is just something adorable about a BAG in a Versaplanetary... thinking over the off-season we'll have to to purchase some 2 or 3 inch colsons and make a little drivetrain.