I thought that other teams might be interested in this hack:
When building our winch, we found that we needed to lose 1/2" of width in order to fit it in our scaler (a consequence of not modelling fasteners - ah well). To find the room, we moved the VEX encoder stage from the versaplanetary to the winch axle by printing a new “hex bore gear” for the encoder. The result worked so well we moved the encoder on our “battering ramp” too using the same trick (see attached photos).
You can find all of the CAD files you need to produce your own hex-bore encoders here. Feel free to use them, and share your results with us! http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1473056
Related story: maybe we’re cursed, but we’ve had so much trouble with encoders over the years:
In 2014 (previous team) the plastic gears slipped in the (V1) shaft of the ballshifters. Sigh
In 2015 the rotor clamp kept slipping, and the cable kept popping out of the CUI AMT encoders. Facepalm
In 2016 we tried CIMcoders, but found they keep losing counts (despite several attempts to debug and repair - still don’t know what the issue is). Temper tantrum
So after we got knocked out during quarters at Waterloo (congrats again 1241, 610 and 3560) we took the time to mount hex-bore encoders on our live axles (photo attached). We’ll see at champs if they finally provide us with a rock solid drive encoder solution, and a chance to score in auto. (Now if only we could have talon data cables longer than 6"!)
I forgot to post an update to this story. The hex-bore versa encoders worked perfectly all the way through champs. They allowed us to implement our low-goal auto (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muoSbQza0zQ) which was key to our excellent performance in Carson. There are a couple of caveats though:
The versa planetary encoder housing is pretty flexible. It was a bit too easy to clamp it down in a way that pushed the internal magnet out of alignment. (Having a coloured light indicator for alignment was a big help though). Next year we might design and print a new housing, as well as the hex bore gear
The 6" ribbon cable limit really sucks. We built extension cables using breakout boards and pwm cables, but that makes for an expensive and time-consuming cable!
Otherwise I was pretty happy with these hacked encoders. They will be especially useful if we switch to a cantilevered live axle (west-coast drive) next year.
