hello my name is maruf and i am from team 1635-the technotics.This year as rookies we used more pistons than motors. The only motors we used were the fisher price motors. I was wondering how to use the windhsield motors and where the sprockets can be found for these motors.
Would love to help you out there…
Personally I always try to stay away from pistons unless its something like shifting. I tend to not to use big pistons on robot simply because of the fact that the compressor takes time. In a FIRST game, you only have 2 minutes for each match.
I am sure you have used the one speed transmission supplied in the kit of parts. The kit of parts uses 4 CIM motors. The windshield motor, I am guessing you are talking about the window motor. the window motor has a gear attached to it. It also has 3 holes which are tapped so you would be able to mount it. Gears and sprockets can be found and ordered on www.mcmaster.com … I don’t know how well this might work but I would machine a shaft that would fit onto that gear. I couldn’t think of the word. But like Matt said, “Its like a planetary with the sun gear meshing perfectly in to the gear on the window motor.”
In the Kit of parts that you get, there are couplers for the window motors that allows you to drive a shaft with it. I think because of the coupler, it can only work with one of the two window motors…I think because one of them had like, a 9 tooth gear on it and the other had I believe an 8 tooth gear. I may be wrong about that, but ya, they’re in the kit. Good luck with that for how you’re going to use them. The possibilities are endless.
Jeff is right. If I remember correctly they are made out of plastic.
Jupp, I think the Nippon Denso (black) window motor had the 9-tooth gear and could be fitted with the black plastic coupler that came in the kit. The Jideco motors had the 8-tooth gear (correct me if i’m wrong).
There is no sprocket for the Jideco, at least not that I know of. Some teams get around this buy finding the car that the window motor went into and just pulling out the arm assembly (if you can find the car in a local scrapyard) or just ordering the window assembly from a dealer, which can get sort of expensive.
The other option is to cut your own gear coupler. For the Nippon Denso motor, teams used the CAD files from the FIRST CAD Library (it is under the Mechanical part’s link) and use a CNC mill, or any appropriate cutting device, to make a nice cut-out.
For the Jideco, I think someone on CD made a CAD rendering of the cut-out, not sure.
If you don’t have access to anything fancy, you could just cut out something close to the gear pattern, and just epoxy the two together – sort of the poor man’s way. I’m sure there’s more better ways to do it.
Don’t forget about the van door and globe motors, they have shafts instead of a gear pattern, although the van door has a metric shaft, and some of the van doors that were shipped out were funny.
And like what Arefin mentioned, I think you meant window motors. I sort of chuckled when I read windshield motors, I want my car to have a windshield that can go up and down!
Hope this helps.
Edit: Fixed, haha
I’ve been in FIRST since 2002 and I’ve never seen a Van Door motor with a sprocket on it. perhaps you got some special “deluxe edition” of the Kit of Parts?
Anyway, you can machine shaft to fit over the Van Door and Globe motors. For the ND window motor, a plastic coupler is included in the Kit which will couple the gear on the motor to a 5/8" standard ANSI keyed shaft. For the Jideco motor, that is left up to your creativity.
xmarufx, you didn’t mention anything about the CIM motors. Did you use those? A very nice gearbox for them was included in the Kit.
:yikes: :yikes: :yikes:
Lol, okay so maybe I was a bit loopy this morning. Blame it on jet-lag and airline food. I fixed my post anyways.
The best think I’ve ever done with a window motor…
We needed to mount a sprocket to the window with general ease. I felt it would take too long to make a part to fit onto the wierd 9 tooth gear, and it would be too big. Soo… I take the gear off, stick it on a lathe, and cut the teeth off using carbide tooling. And what did I have left, after a little millwork? A half inch shaft with a notch in it, perfect for a sprocket and set screw.
By the way, this motor was used on team 115 MVRT’s 2004 season swivel drive. Any machining questions on how to do this, pm me! Its easy, any metal lathe can do it, as long as you have a carbide insert facing tool. Heck, if your team is close to me I’ll lend you one if you need it.
That’s a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that? So the gear on the Jideco comes off? (I can’t exactly remember, although I remember taking the ND all apart).
This was 2004, so we cut down a nippon denso, not a jideco. I’ve seen it done to a jideco too though, but I’ve never gotten around to finding out how to open it.