After a few years of pushing the Bosch drill motors right to the limits of their performance during the competitions (even when taking full advantage of Dr. Joe’s wonderful drill mods:) ), I keep wondering if we will have them in the kits again next year as the probable “prime movers.” Is there any significant interest in pushing for a more capable set of motors?
I am getting one of the motors that many of the BattleBots teams are starting to use, which looks very impressive if the write-ups are anywhere near accurate (see http://www.robotbooks.com/robot-motors.htm for info). I am interested enough that I paid for one of these puppys out of my pocket (don’t tell my wife!), and want to play with it this summer.
They are expensive, but if we had something like this in the kits, it could make for an entirely different game (I have visions of last year’s machines being able to get serious air time off the bridge if we had similar motors ). Machine speed and Robo-Sumo capabilites could become major aspects of the game.
I think it’s a very good idea to change from the drill motors to something else. It doesn’t have to be much more powerful, only more efficient. The drills heat up, are noisy, and has caused lots of problems to many many teams, including us (fortunately, not during the real thing… :D)
But I’m not sure if that Magmotor is the best choice, for the following reasons:
It’s a 24 Volt motor
It weights a lot, using two of these and the Exide battery, you’d be using almost 30% of the maximum weight allowed
It’s kinda expensive, at U$ 345… I don’t know in the USA, but here in Brazil we can buy the drill with the gearbox for about U$ 40…
Other than that, it’s a very impressive motor, just not for FIRST competition, I believe. If someone comes up with something as powerful, but lighter and cheaper, I’m all for it…
I think we should keep the drill motors for a while…This year a few of our engineers dreamed up an awesome Dual Motor Assembly that was great this year and i hope we can keep using the drill motors and make it better for the future…
Prints and Descriptions can be found in theWhite Papers
Dual Motor Gear Switching Assy (doc - 545kb)
Dual Motor Gear Switching Assy (pdf - 647kb)
and
Gear Switching and Motor Mount Design
Andrew Baker (Technokats)
Microsoft Word is needed to view this file.
I was going to say that, but forgot… Now a post from a Technokat reminded me: The Magmotor’s shaft extends to the back of the motor much more than the drill’s, you might take advantage of that…
*Originally posted by dlavery *
**After a few years of pushing the Bosch drill motors right to the limits of their performance during the competitions (even when taking full advantage of Dr. Joe’s wonderful drill mods:) ), I keep wondering if we will have them in the kits again next year as the probable “prime movers.” Is there any significant interest in pushing for a more capable set of motors?
I am getting one of the motors that many of the BattleBots teams are starting to use, which looks very impressive if the write-ups are anywhere near accurate (see Robot Motors - PMDC motors for BattleBots and Combat Robots for info). I am interested enough that I paid for one of these puppys out of my pocket (don’t tell my wife!), and want to play with it this summer.
They are expensive, but if we had something like this in the kits, it could make for an entirely different game (I have visions of last year’s machines being able to get serious air time off the bridge if we had similar motors ). Machine speed and Robo-Sumo capabilites could become major aspects of the game.
-dave **
I’d have to say stick with what we have. The main reason for that is because there is a certain challenge to making a drill motor drive a robot. It’s part of the competition to be challenging. The drill motors aren’t designed to drive a robot and it’s something that has to be engineered around. Plus I want to think the drill motors are donated…
I don’t know if you remember but on Junkyard Wars, the episode where they had to build submarines. The geeks side, I think used a 12 volt motor to power their little submarine. The thing looked powerful. I think it was one from a washermachine or something.
All right so everyone seems to be iffy on the drill motors, but what about that torque motor? Who used it? What for? and who still wants it in the kit? Or would somthing else be better?
The torque motor was a nifty idea but we didn’t use it because it didn’t go around enough to use on our robot. The range of motion on that motor was less then 180
Another thing was the light sensor. Remember the ballot thingie at Kick-Off. I mean nothing was color sensitive or small enough to make any sense for it to use.
My ONLY complaint about the drill engines is that they heat up and make funny smells. When they make funny smells the big people tell us to turn the robot off.
They overheat, bad. I have no problem working around their power/speed issues, infact i think its a great power/speed. Teams with light robots can move much faster then teams with huge ones (using just the gearbox that came with the drill).
Maybe switch to a better drill ?)
Oh well… next year i’m personally water - cooling the suckers.
*Originally posted by Clark Gilbert *
**(shameless plug)
Give Team 45’s Motor Mount Assemblies a try!
(they work great, i know a few teams have used it) **
actually we kinda gave up on designing our oun drive motor system and went with the kokomo design. it worked flawlessly. other than a little problem with friction in the beginning, we never had a problem with it. We didn’t have any overheating or gearbox problems with it. we are excited to try out the drill motor design from the 2001 TechnoKart on our robot next year.
If you have problems with your drive system, i would HIGHLY reccomend looking into the the TechnoKats design.
*Originally posted by Matt Leese *
**
I’d have to say stick with what we have. The main reason for that is because there is a certain challenge to making a drill motor drive a robot. It’s part of the competition to be challenging. The drill motors aren’t designed to drive a robot and it’s something that has to be engineered around. Plus I want to think the drill motors are donated…
Matt **
I think Leese has a point here. How great is it to think “wow I’m moving this robot around using drill motors.” What about when you’re doing a demo andsomeone asks about the drive train. When you tell them it’s drill motors you feel great because you used something other than for its intended purpose. I like the drill motors, they’re a good thing.
*Originally posted by Kyle Fenton *
**The torque motor was a nifty idea but we didn’t use it because it didn’t go around enough to use on our robot. The range of motion on that motor was less then 180
Another thing was the light sensor. Remember the ballot thingie at Kick-Off. I mean nothing was color sensitive or small enough to make any sense for it to use. **
The torque motors was donated to FIRST. That’s why they were in the kit. As far as the optical sensor goes, we were going to use it (actually had it hooked up and all) to automate part of our robot function but it ended up that we really didn’t want it (we needed to time delay it). So the sensor had a use and probably will in the future. However, it will not be used by most teams.
*Originally posted by GregT *
**My ONLY complaint about the drill engines is that they heat up and make funny smells. When they make funny smells the big people tell us to turn the robot off.
They overheat, bad. I have no problem working around their power/speed issues, infact i think its a great power/speed. Teams with light robots can move much faster then teams with huge ones (using just the gearbox that came with the drill).
Maybe switch to a better drill ?)
Oh well… next year i’m personally water - cooling the suckers. **
The drill motors is a completely fine motor. In fact, it’s probably one of the better 12 volt drill motors you can buy. It’s just the fact that we tend to put them under much higher loads then they were ever expected to preform. If you’re having significant problems with the drill motors overheating, there probably is a problem with the drive train and not the motor itself. Usually it’s not the motor’s fault.
With the optic sensor in 99 a team at nationals (##??) used it to detect the floppies and the wheels would move out of the way. Sorta, im not sure really maybe someone rembers more than i do i was only an 8th grader amazed by the robots back then and i rember it winning an award.
I have seen the heat problem resolved on a few teams using a finned heatsink that works pretty well. It was contoured to match the outside can of the motor, while your at it add a small muffin fan to pass air through the fins and you are all set.
I don’t know if it is legal but you can use a thermal grease to transfer the heat even better.
(Computer processors use the same thing and they get so hot you can’t touch them.)
Early in the competitions this year, my team experimented with using the torque motors to give more control to our robot. What instead happened was a robot that no one on our team could handle and after our first competition those motors were removed and all we had left were the drill motors. Those worked perfectly fine and we could easily control our bot once again. Yeah! As for getting better/faster motors: Keep in mind that not all teams might have the money to do something like this. Our team barely had the money as is and we’re not rookies. I think it best to stay with what we have.
). Machine speed and Robo-Sumo capabilites could become major aspects of the game.
). Machine speed and Robo-Sumo capabilites could become major aspects of the game.
Give Team 45’s Motor Mount Assemblies a try! 
Give Team 45’s Motor Mount Assemblies a try!