Falcon 500 shaft issues - ways to fix em?

[merfin04]

Hey there, now that the season is over, and that the falcons I ordered last June finally arrived, do any of you have any ideas on how to solve the loose shaft problem? TY <3

[adiprajapati]

My team Devilbotz 2876 is looking on getting MK4i L2 Swerve Modules for falcon 500s and when talking to other team they suggest the Thrifty Bot Motor Output Shaft. I would also suggest using lock tight all the bolts on the motor. Bellow is a like to the Thrifty Bot Shaft.

*This shaft will not work on the 2023 Falcon 500 motors

8mm Keyed Motor Output Shaft

[Akash_Rastogi]

We only ran a few V3 Falcons this year, and reused several V1 and V2 motors, but here’s our only quick recommendation for V3 shafts

How long will falcon swerve last?

If you have V3’s I would recommend checking the shaft/rotor spline interface for fretting Fretting - Wikipedia If you can add an appropriate spline grease they will probably last for another season just fine. As for V1 and V2 motors we have several that have lasted 2-3 seasons without issue. But the reality is I would expect there to be more options for FRC legal brushless motors or revisions to fix known issues with existing motors and supply chains in the near future (2024 & 2025 seasons) s…

[electroken]

“Back in the day”, the spline between the final drive and the rear wheel in Honda Goldwing motorcycles would eat itself without the proper spline lubricant. This is the stuff:

[jreneew2]

Also looking for tips as we have 20 v3 falcons that we are scared to use without a check list of things to double check before attaching them to a robot.

Here is my checklist so far

• Check for loctite and reapply blue loctite on motor shell bolts.
• Check for loose shaft, not sure how to fix for now

[kingc95]

At some point my plan is to finish compiling the falcon troubleshooting guide I’ve been working on falcon 500 fixes and trying to catalog the various issues and fixes. Wobbly shaft is a noted issue, but fixes for it were not so this is a great thread Im gonna keep my eyes on.

[merfin04]

yep, I also got 20, and only 8 are, lets say “OK”, and the rest have the loose shaft, now that the season has finished I’ll open one of the bad ones to check what I can do, ill tell you If I can find something else to add to the check list.

[Akash_Rastogi]

If possible in your application you can support the shaft with an additional bearing. I don’t believe that would over constrain them. @Peter_Matteson

One thing we did for ours was keep pinions as close to the case/boss as possible to avoid cantilevered loads. That plus the spline grease worked well so far, even for our swerve.

Unsure how long the shafts will last on the V3’s tbh, we may do a diagnostic to check the status of a few next time we’re able.

[Peter_Matteson]

Adding a bearing to the shaft end should help prevent issues caused by high levels of side loading. just make sure everything is aligned properly if you do it.

[Oblarg]

In what industry is this kind of failure rate of parts on arrival acceptable?

I’d ask for your money back.

[D_Price]

Honestly with that drastic of a failure rate I would be sending a nicely worded email with picture documentation of each Falcon that is bad and the issue and ask for a solution and/or replacements, and not for you to send them back. Because I am sorry, in the FIRST world these are a small fortune to most teams and to have such a poor QC it is incredible that you are an approved company through FIRST baffles me.

I 100% agree with @Oblarg on this one as far as

@Oblarg

In what industry is this kind of failure rate of parts on arrival acceptable?

Just my two cents.

[jtrv]

I know some VEX employees have been reading the forum lately, so hopefully they should reach out to you soon and get you replacements and/or a refund. 60% failure rate is pretty crazy.

[kingc95]

I will say I only had 1 out of the 6 we bought that had an issue but that’s still a 16.66% failure rate I don’t know that the issue I had would be detrimental enough to matter. However others are definitely seeing closer to 25-40% from what I’ve gathered. We also QC all of ours when they arrived which shouldn’t be necessary but we’ve learned we absolutely have to.

[EricH]

HAH!

I used to do a job that needed close to 200 of a particular part (well… actually more, often less, depending how you slice it. Intentionally staying vague). If we got 8 BAD ones in a full batch we were unhappy campers.

And for us, “BAD” was sometimes defined as “manufacturing marks”, more often “manufacturing marks that do certain things”.

And when we were unhappy campers, so was purchasing… who would make noise at the vendor. Bad part counts dropped.

[merfin04]

yeah, their quality control is trash, and a bit worst for our situation as we had to pay taxes to get them through the border and each was like 400usd for us
Unfortunately, if we were to send them back and get a replacement that would take months.

[Oblarg]

Have you considered filing a grievance with your payment processor? I would look at any/all options to get either a refund or replacements.

[jreneew2]

The issue at least with our team in a similar situation, is that we purchased these falcons through a school PO from grant money. We submitted the PO months before a PO was actually given to vex, and then it was more months before the falcon v3 issues were discovered and when we received our falcons.

So it’s gonna be a giant PITA working with the school and Vex to try and get a refund / replacements.