Planetary Gearboxes for Falcon 500s

Technical Motors
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Hey all! Our team is going to be using Falcon 500s next season and needs to find planetary gearboxes to use. Historically, our team has used the “CIM Sport” gearboxes from Andymark but we’re not sure if these work work with Falcons. I know there is a Falcon version of that gearbox and I know it uses a different pinion but i’m not sure if that’s the only difference. Ideally, we’d like to keep the gearboxes and use the Falcon pinions we can buy separately so we can keep using the old gearboxes but we’re not sure if that works. Does anyone have any experience with doing this?

If it doesn’t work, what other gearboxes do you recommend for Falcons?

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The REV MaxPlanetary is built for Falcons as well, but requires switching to the supplied keyed shaft.

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Thank you! It seems that shaft is still out of stock and we’d also prefer to not spend a whole lot of money on whole new gearboxes since we already have a lot of AM Sport Gearboxes. We’ll look into these though!

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If you want to continue with the CIM sport (which is a solid choice), you can use these with your falcon: https://www.thethriftybot.com/bearings/8mm-Keyed-Motor-Output-Shaft-p157387731.

Or…This kit should work with the falcon short shaft configuration sold by Vex/CTRE.

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Thank you very much! Do you know if you need the short shaft configuration? It seems with the thirftybot one you still get a “long shaft” and I know NEOS use a long shaft so wouldn’t a Falcon long shaft work with the kit?

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I’ve heard mixed (but mostly good) reviews about the REV MaxPlanetary gearboxes although I haven’t used them personally. As a rule though, we refuse to use any VersaPlanetary components in our robots anymore. Too many bad experiences with the gears shredding themselves in moderately high (but still within published limits) loads.

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Well. That depends.

If you don’t want to cut the shaft: you can use this:

You can cut down the 8mm shaft on the Neo/CIM/Falcon with ttb shaft and instead use this, saving some space:

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Curious to hear what reviews you’ve heard about that makes it mixed. Could you list some of the downsides you have been told about?

*Disclaimer I worked at REV and worked on the development of the MP. So I am a bit curious because of that but also as someone whose team has been using them and plans to continue.

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Here is a preview of a new REV product we will be announcing in a few weeks. Falcon Teams won’t have to switch their shafts to use MAX Planetary any more.

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We have some other MP goodies coming also before the season starts.

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Nice! When do you estimate these will be shipped (I know it may be too early to ask)? Curious so we know whether or not to wait for these or just go for some other option. We want to experiment with what we want to use in build season before the build season so it’s not all new.

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I am also curious, we absolutely love MaxPlanetaries and had 0 issues with them propelling our robot to the traversal bar all season. They are tough as heck and super easy to assemble.

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One person I talked to from FTC claimed they felt a bit cheap and plasticky and that they had more backlash than other planetary gearboxes. I wouldn’t decide not to buy one from this statement alone. But I know of others who have used them successfully (I know team 3476 was using them) and I’d heard they are a bit stronger than VPs. We’d decided on our team that the next time we had to purchase large quantities of planetary gearbox parts we may give the MaxPlanetaries a try over VPs, but on 696 we also have the capability to fully design and manufacture our own custom gearboxes, which we have had much more success with [see HellaTorque Climber].

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Might they be talking about the similarly named UltraPlanetary? MaxPlaneterys are not a product marketed towards FTC, and are definitely not cheap or plasticky- the entire housing is aluminum and feel quite solid. I haven’t noticed much backlash in ours.

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That’s more likely the case, as neither of us is super familiar with the hardware the other uses.

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Fair bet they were mixing up the UltraPlanetary and MAXPlanetary. The MAXPlanetary will happily take a NEO or Falcon 500 at 125:1; a VersaPlanetary maxes out at 30:1 according to their load rating guide.

That said, if your build ecosystem includes the SPARK MAX you’re wise to have a couple NEO 550s and UltraPlanetary kits available. They’re a phenomenal value for high-speed low-torque mechanisms (up to 40 N-m, or practically speaking about 30:1 reduction), and their compactness makes them easy to package too.

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We love them but we did have a bearing go bad on our climber winch. We’re looking at changing the bearing out if we get time to look at it. Strange it crapped out with barely any use at all.

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This kit (along with the short shaft) is the intended way to use a Blue Sport gearbox with a Falcon. I would recommend against using the replacement key shaft, as the pinion for the key shaft is a press fit. Once this press fit is installed on the key shaft you will have trapped the nose bearing and face plate onto the shaft making access to the shaft retention screws inside the Falcon very difficult.

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