AndyMark Nano Break In

[Dale]

We'll have 4 AndyMark Nanos on our robot this year for the Mechanum drive system. We've learned from experience it's important to break in transmissions on the bench before putting them on the robot and were planning on doing the same with the Nanos. When we did this, though, we're finding a huge range in current draw between Nanos (4 and a spare) with two drawing 11 amps just sitting on the bench, two drawing 6 and one drawing 3 amps!

We haven't run them for the hour or so we typically would but the 11 amp ones get too hot to hold after five minutes. We'd have to run them in bursts to break in. We've looked all through them and can't see anything obviously wrong.

What we've done to the transmissions getting them ready is installed a Nylon spacer on the last stage to keep the axle from sliding back and forth (screwing up the encoder) and switched to the AndyMark aluminum gear in the first stage for weight. The nylon washer has been checked and isn't too tight. All of the transmission have been heavily lubed with SuperLube synthetic grease.

Has anyone else seen similar results? Any ideas of what to try or should we just keep running them and hope they wear in?