Team 3332 here wondering how and where other teams have placed there fans/ventilation of any kind, or if you just opted out of it altogether.
Post pics if you can!
We just played in the P’tree regional and this is what I can tell you about our fans.
We were one of the few teams who implemented fans. We also found them to be very tedious to line up, and nearly impossible to line up in the face of defense. At our best we scored 4 goals, but when we were heavily defended, we could only barely manage 1.
We’re going to try and get a stronger vac, but I think that we’re going to be trying rollers for the next competition.
I’m pretty sure Labot was asking about muffin fans for cooling, not about systems for creating a vacuum.
The only cooling/ventilation fans I remember seeing used at the DC Regional were the ones built in to speed controllers. A team did come by the TechnoKats pit and borrow* one of the spare Victor fans from our Kit of Parts, and I got the impression it was for something other than a Victor, but I didn’t see its final destination.
- Okay, we outright gave it to them with our compliments, without bothering to write down their team number the way we would have if they had borrowed something like our step drill or a charged battery.
For the most part, none of the electronics gets hot enough to require additional cooling unless you’ve sealed them inside a box. In the past I have seen teams use the fans to keep their motors cool. Some only used them between matches to cool down their motors.
@Alan, I’m sure they have the intention of returning it after it has stopped working…lol
I saw a few robots at the DC Regional (evidently Alan did not see them) that had complete box enclosures around their electronics. These were the only teams with any sort of fan mounted apart from speed controllers. They normally just had 1 or 2 computer fans mounted on the top of the side of the box with a smaller hole elsewhere to promote airflow. There were maybe 4 that I saw that did this.
It has been years since we’ve put ventilation fans on our CIM motors. The only time we’ve missed them was during practice rounds for Overdrive when there weren’t many other teams ready to go and the tournament organizers wanted a full field of robots to test the field. I think we played four or five full matches in quick succession, pausing once to change batteries, before we finally pulled the robot off the field because the motors were getting a bit too warm and needed to cool down for a while.
We’ve also heated the motors up in the shop during build (I recall once when we weren’t paying attention and let them get too hot using a bit of carefully packed snow to cool them down so we could drive again… now we use an IR thermometer from time to time and try not to let the outside of the case get too hot… I think it is somewhere around 40-50 degrees that we shut them down…), but we never have we been able to make the CIM’s get “too hot” in a qualifying or elimination match.
The FP’s, however, start to heat up really quickly if you don’t keep them moving at a fairly high speed. We built a heat sink for our Aim High ball shooter, which ran at around 10 amps (and could keep it up for most of a match) but we also make a point of only running the FP’s off a 20amp breaker, and monitoring current use carefully (clamp on ammeters rule!) during build. We prefer to keep the FPs drawing under 5amps. Some teams have come up with quick and simple ways to strap a small fan on to their FP using zap ties, and it probably helps a bit.
So if you don’t see teams using the cooling fans, it is probably because they aren’t really necessary, consume a bit of current when the robot is running, and add weight that doesn’t contribute to the overall success of the robot.
Jason