Falcon 500 Changes & Inventory

FIRST General Forum
#1

We just wanted to provide an update on the Falcon 500:

The Falcon will be back in stock on the web starting Friday 12/4 (tomorrow) at 1PM CST!

We did make some minor improvements since the Falcon was originally released:

  • The long screws holding the motor chamber together have been changed from steel to stainless to make re-assembly easier.
  • The #10-32 set screws have been removed from the faceplate.
  • The #10-32 set screw on the cooling port has been replaced with a #10-32 button head screw
  • The M2.5 screws on attaching the shaft to the motor have been changed from 2mm hex drive to T8 drive
  • All screws have been changed to harder materials to make them more difficult to strip
  • A thin washer has been added between the output bearing and the shaft flange.

There will be a $2.99 hardware pack available for customers who want to upgrade their existing Falcons with these changes. The hardware pack includes:

  • The new stainless motor chamber screws
  • The #10-32 button head screw for the cooling port
  • The new T8 drive M2.5 screws for the motor shaft
  • The shaft washer

This should be available for sale on the website in the next couple of weeks.

In addition to the changes above, we have been working on improving the mechanical fit between the spline shaft and the Falcon bore pinions.

  1. All old pinions were pulled from stock and re-kitted into 6-packs of tight-press pinions. These 6-packs will be available late next week and will be sold at a steep discount.

  2. New, in tolerance pinions, should be back in stock in the next week or so.

  3. During quarantine we did a deeper investigation on what caused the tight press problem, we discovered a manufacturing problem with the motor shafts themselves. This issue caused situations where even pinions that were in-tolerance could still be a tight fit on the motor shaft.

We’ve worked with our suppliers to resolve this issue. To help customers easily identify shafts with this problem, we’ve changed the color of the shaft from silver to black. The new black spline shafts are designed to be a slip fit on both the tight press pinions and the in tolerance pinions.

Silver shafts will still need to be sanded down to work with tight-press pinions and some of the in-tolerance pinions. We are working on getting more black spline shafts to sell as replacement shafts.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks as we still have more products to release.

68 Likes
VEXpro - 2020 New Products
#2

Will they be restocked on all the sites they’re sold on or just Vexpro tomorrow? Very happy to see that some stock will be available again on these soon

1 Like
#3

All sites

6 Likes
#4

Edit: vexrobotics.com, & WCP will be available on Friday. CTRE will be available on Monday.

Stock will be available for our international warehouses in the coming weeks as they receive their shipments.

6 Likes
#5

I admit, I’m quite pleased to hear that they are going back in stock. I was worried we would have to have multiple types of brushless motors.

2 Likes
#6

Baby NEO (Neo550) is totally worth it.

7 Likes
#7

I actually agree on baby neos, I’m of the opinion though that we shouldn’t mix falcons and big neos, but that’s me.

1 Like
#8

Question: what exactly would stop you from just running all NEOs in that situation?

3 Likes
#9

We prefer the term MiNEO (pronounced ‘Min-E-O’ or ‘Mini-O’). Kinda rolls off the tongue.

And I agree, they are totally worth it, even if it is just for the wow factor of the outrunner rotor spinning as the motor does its thing.

Kinda wished they had left the dust shield off the NEO as well. It would have been really cool to see all the motor rotors spinning as our swerve drive scoots around the field.

Love the Falcon 500! Love the changes that have been announced! Love the fact that these vendors are willing to keep pushing out better and better products!

Thanks guys!Love’n the Brushless Revolution!

7 Likes
#10

I might just be out of the loop, but are there any updates on enabling Field Oriented Control?

3 Likes
#11

We already purchased 7 Falcons in the previous year due to their encoders, and we don’t have sufficient funds to move over to Neos completely

1 Like
#12

We did have some issues with reassembly last year after we took the motor apart to loctite the shaft screws, but how does changing the material of the long screws make it easier to reassemble?

2 Likes
#13

Non magnetic?

5 Likes
#14

What Mark said. The stainless screws aren’t magnetic so they won’t stick to the magnets in the rotor housing.

8 Likes
#15

Is there an ETA on other VexPro out-of-stock products? Thunderhex etc

3 Likes
#16

ThunderHex is probably a couple of weeks out still.

3 Likes
#17

I wanted to ask, do you possibly have an eta on the 90 degree VP kits?

1 Like
#18

When you say that you’ve removed the 10-32 set screws from the faceplate, does that mean the 10-32 tapped holes in the faceplate are gone too?

1 Like
#19

No, you still have to use those holes to mount the motor. If you look at the new picture on the Vex website they are still tapped. This was most likely done to stop the set screws from falling into the motor.

2 Likes
#20

Ready.

image

-Mike

46 Likes