Posted by Michael “Special K” Krass at 2/1/2001 3:09 PM EST
Other on team #271, Mechanical Marauders, from Bay Shore High School and Verizon.
Well, with just over two weeks remaining until the ship date, there’s finally some visible progress with our robot (It seems that things go slowly wherever I work).
Anyway, our first tests showed our robot moving at a little more than .5 m/s. That is atrociously slow for a game that depends so heavily on time, and we are trying to regear it to make it a bit faster without making those stupid drill motors overheat.
Anyway, can anyone else give me an idea of how fast your robot moves? I know you can get 'em going pretty fast, but we’re hoping to avoid sacrificing as much power as possible, so that we can still move the goals around.
~ Michael ~
Posted by Raul at 2/1/2001 3:47 PM EST
Engineer on team #111, Wildstang, from Rolling Meadows & Wheeling HS and Motorola.
In Reply to: How fast?
Posted by Michael on 2/1/2001 3:09 PM EST:
If you are using just the 2 drill motors geared to a top speed of about 5 feet/sec. you should still get plenty of thrust assuming you have good traction.
Raul
: Well, with just over two weeks remaining until the ship date, there’s finally some visible progress with our robot (It seems that things go slowly wherever I work).
:
: Anyway, our first tests showed our robot moving at a little more than .5 m/s. That is atrociously slow for a game that depends so heavily on time, and we are trying to regear it to make it a bit faster without making those stupid drill motors overheat.
: Anyway, can anyone else give me an idea of how fast your robot moves? I know you can get 'em going pretty fast, but we’re hoping to avoid sacrificing as much power as possible, so that we can still move the goals around.
: ~ Michael ~
:
Posted by Anton Abaya at 2/1/2001 11:57 PM EST
Coach on team #419, Rambots, from UMass Boston / BC High and NONE AT THE MOMENT! :(.
In Reply to: Re: How fast?
Posted by Raul on 2/1/2001 3:47 PM EST:
at low gear on the motors, we can move the robot around and drag things around with a speed of about 5ft/sec. we run the motors around and abuse them for 10 minutes without em overheating (just nice a warm that’s ok to touch for a minute without burning urself).
at high gear, we attain ~12ft/sec? at full speed. this is my guestimate and although our gear ratio originally intended 15ft/sec…i doubt it’s going that fast. in any case, it’s a speed demon and kinda shocked us when we first went that fast. in any case, that was high gear. we tried dragging a few things and we still were able to drag things around (a table with casters with a 130lbs person sitting on it). the breakers did not trip, but the motors were painful to touch if u kept ur finger on it for more than 2 seconds…
we’re still playing with ideas and testing the drive train.
good luck, i hope this info helps.
-anton
Posted by Khalid at 2/2/2001 12:16 AM EST
Student on team #486, The Positronic Panthers, from Strath Haven High School.
In Reply to: How fast?
Posted by Michael on 2/1/2001 3:09 PM EST:
I am very satisfied with the speed of our drive system. Our students and engineers came up with a speed we feel is neccessary, which was a little above 4 miles per hour. We worked backwards from there with our gearing. So think about the size of your wheels and the gear attached to it (very important when converting from RPMS to MPH) and the gearing. And don’t forget that there are two settings on the drill motors, therefore, two different speeds, or I should say RPMs. It takes a little research and a tat bit of thinking but its easy. I am sure anyone can figure out theoretically the perfect gearing for the wheels.
For us, our theory came true and our speed is a between 4 and 5 MPH.
P.S. There is a chart of the motors in the white papers where you can find information like RPMS and current draw and all the good stuff. They are very, very, very handy.
Posted by George at 2/2/2001 1:54 AM EST
Coach on team #180, S.P.A.M., from None and UTC Pratt Whitney.
In Reply to: How fast?
Posted by Michael on 2/1/2001 3:09 PM EST:
we’re getting 7 to 8 feet per sec and around 80 (i think) lbs of thrust out of our drive system.
good luck to everyone as we aproach crunch time :-]
George
SPAM Team 180