One of our bag motors started smoking. we are wondering what might be the cause so we can fix or prevent it.
Did it just start randomly smoking? or was it stalled out then started smoking? What is this motor running? This may be able to determine if the gear reduction for this is too low, causing too much strain on the motor.
Most likely you stalled it too long and as we say “let the magic smoke out”. Do NOT use this motor again. Burnt motors are not happy motors. Really, making sure that you are not stalling it or shorting them.
Are there any motors that we can stall, and wont cause issues.
Can you please provide some more information? Specifics of your setup and pictures? We can’t help if we don’t know what’s going on.
The Bag CIM is one of the most rugged and forgiving motors in FRC when it comes to stalling and heavy loading. If you are stalling motors, there is a problem in your design or construction. And I’ll echo what’s already been said and tell you to throw out the motor that started smoking.
CIMs and miniCIMs can take quite a lot of stall time, but no brushed motor can be stalled indefinitely.
The one thing you can do is limit the command to the bare minimum to hold the load. That reduces the heat added to the motor.
You can probably stall a CIM at 1 volt indefinitely.
Look at the Locked Rotor tests here to answer your question:
At certain voltages you can pretty much stall forever on any motor.
-Aren