One of my predictions for this year’s competition is that there may be a great deal of magic smoke as a result of high RPM motors stalling out, and mechanical parts exploding from strong centrifugal forces.
What do you think?
If you have some good pics of magic smoke in action, feel free to post them
When mechanical parts explode all the magic noise leaks out all at once, and it stops working.
You can sometimes get some of the magic noise back into the parts by yelling at them, hitting them, or bashing them with a hammer
but usually they have to go back to a machine shop, where they can be pumped full again by the noisey machines.
Mechanical parts are only suppose to give out their magical noise a little bit at a time!
I’ve noticed some chain moving at high velocity. I can’t ever remember seeing a chain come apart. Maybe I’ll get to see it happen.
i can see smoke happening via motors get red hot. there may be shrapnel flying if a robot starts shredding balls. it is possible. this also brings up another good point, if motors stop working correctly, will there be balls flying into the stands? :ahh:
THAT WOULD BE REALLY COOL TO SEE!!! LOL
Josh
with all the spinning wheel shooters this year, some with variable angles, Im thinking about the steam generator station in Buffalo, along the Niagara River (near Strawberry Island).
Many years ago one of the 12 foot diameter generator armatures broke loose from its bearings. Since it was mounted vertically it bounced around the inside of the brick building for several seconds, like a giant top gone wild.
Finally it hit something solid and flew out through the brick wall, landing in the niagara river a few hundred yards away. You can still see the patch where the hole in the brick wall was repaired.
So what will happen if one of these spinning shooter wheels breaks loose inside a robot? It would be like a metal tornado inside the machine!
I would hope teams to the time to properly balance their high speed wheels to minimize the vibrations that would tear apart machines. Also I woupld hope people properly use Loctite, lock nuts, lock washers, and jamb nuts to prevent things from coming apart. Hopefully we don’t need to resort to safety wire.
I do believe though that I will detect the oh too familiar scent of FP magic smoke very quickly as someone will stall them or have improper air flow kill one at the regionals I attend.
Yesturday we were testing the camera on the robot and we were running our shooting mechanism and the camera lens flew off the board and shot across the room …It wasn’t damaged but what a close call…
I love the smell of magic smoke in the morning!
I figure balls will be flying in to the crowd all the time, just from driver error… or will the crowd be made to sit further away this year?
Our chain came apart 
We were running it at 4000 RMP, and the cnain hit a peice of lexan just right so it unclipped the masterlink…
That was scary :o
I missed that, Cody, when did it happen?
When you were at district jazz, I think.
Yep, as Cody said, it just unexpectedly unclipped. However a horrible noise it emitted, it just kinda slopped off and into something static; not too exciting unless you’re right beside it. The area we have it in is rather enclosed though, so I’m not sure there won’t be some exploding/flying chains on other robots… I’m more worried about plastic wheels shattering towards the end of a second regional.
We never did find the side of that masterlink though… I’d imagine it would have done some damage to flesh if it’d hit someone 
We just had some magick smoke let out. We are trying to figure out why. I was the operator and aparently the hopper was smashing into some wires, and damaged the insulation enough so that… ooopps, black, red, power, ground, poof!
Thought I’d share the story since it happened 10 minutes ago as of now.
Two wires touched.
Paul Dennis
that would be a neat feature if you could do it with the whole camera: remote viewing!
your robot would have an out-of-body experience
This is the author of the original post…you wouldn’t hapen to have a photo of the wires would you?..if so, please post it
That happened to us two years back, except it was while bringing a mast down. wires crushed, scary sound, bad things. Don’t think you were on the team then, Doug.
this year i learned that you can get magic smoke and a nice sized spark if you let the wires of a motor touch after they have been unplugged directly from your battery if the wheel they are spinning is still going fast enough. A logical occurrence if you look at it in retrospect but still quite scary and confusing when it first occurs.
no double posting kids…lol