What motor would you suggest we use to spool the wire that is pulling up our lift and intake mechanism? Would a CIM be good enough?
Any motor can provide the torque to move your lift. You need to determine how far it needs to move, and how fast it needs to move. That will determine what motors and gear ratios you should use.
I suggest taking a look at JVN’s calculator and using the linear motion section to get some estimates.
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As Tom mentioned, it can depend.
It all depends on what motor you use, your gearbox( or geardown), and current draw( can play a part in the long run)
For example,
In 2017 our climber was a single cim motor, and we used a versaplanetary with a 36:1 year ratio. We went a bit over kill on the torque, accepting the lower speed, in order to have more current and less likely to pop the breaker, or brown out after a hard match.
If I remember correctly for last year, we used 2 cim motors on a 4:1 gearbox for our elevator. When the robot was disabled the elevator would back drive, but powered it was fine. Our elevator was a bit lighter being only switch height, so you may want to play around with the JVN calculator.
Factors to consider is your spindle size ( large spindle will effect your Torque)
If you’re gearing down with chain, belts, or a gearbox can all be calculated to give you the amperage draw, speed of the elevator, and max lifting force.
If you have any questions feel free to message me, or ask here.
If you’re not trying to climb with that lift, a CIM motor may well be overkill. We’re powering our lift this year (a cascade lift that uses two cable reels to pull the mechanism) with a single 775 motor and a 25:1 Versa planetary gearbox. The lift zips up at a very alarming rate at max, so we’re going a good deal less than that for our pre-set position movements. It drops back down by gravity, braked by a slow reverse on the motor. We’re lifting about 16lbs. this way. Take a look at the smaller motors like 775s, Redlines, etc. before you commit to something as heavy and power-consuming as a CIM for this.
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775pros/Redlines have the same output power as a CIM. They don’t like being stalled, but at 1/2 free speed they have the same power.
If you want to do the calculations, you can use JVN’s calculator (linked to above) or mine, which does the same things with some more helpful features