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Subject: 
Re: Avoiding motor stalls
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Sat, 9 Jul 2005 18:52:40 GMT
Original-From: 
Mr S <szinn_the1@yahoo.&NoSpam&com>
Viewed: 
1171 times
  
Jordon,
Its hard to say for sure, but it looks like you are
losing torque in the gear conversions. The clutch is a
good idea, but will still strain the motor when it
comes to crunch time.

There are two things that I can think of to help you.

1 - with the same set up you have already, use an RCX
and rotation counter to determine when your drivechain
slows down, then let the program cut power to the
drive motor. That will eliminate > 95% of the chance
to burn out another motor.

2 - Keep the clutchgear on the motor, but make a
breakable/slipping link further down the drive chain
as well. Many of the LEGO wheels (with no tires on
them) will support using the rubber bands in the same
manner that you would use the gears and a chain. At
the point that you are using a big gear to drive a
small one, there is a lot of torque conversion
happening there, and that is the place to use the
rubber bands (assuming they are lose enough to slip if
needed)

3 - use a combination of both ideas

Hope that helps

Cheers
S

--- Jordan Bradford
<bradfj23REMOVE_THIS_SPAM_THINGY@uwosh.edu> wrote:

I broke another 9V motor. See my
<http://news.lugnet.com/technic/?n=14319
original post> for the first story.

I'm building what amounts to a pitching machine for
the Great Ball Contraption.
In most TECHNIC building you're building a gear
train to produce lots of power
at the expense of speed. But in this case I need to
build one that has lots of
speed and not much power.

I have a tire that spins {very} quickly, and as the
soccer balls roll past it
they are accelerated and launched into the air. It's
really cool, and I've been
working with a prototype structure to hold it all
together, so it's flimsy.
Eventually I want to rebuild it to withstand
day-long use, and that also means
fixing the gear train, because I've broken two
motors with it so far.

In the prototype, I put a clutch gear right on the
motor output, but even with
that precaution the motor has a hard time turning if
something completely stops
the spinning tire. In both motors, something inside
them eventually broke under
the strain, so now they are very difficult to turn.
I definitely want to avoid
this in the future.

I have no camera available at the moment to show you
what it looks like, so I'll
do my best to describe the gear setup.

The motor has a clutch gear on its shaft. This is
attached to a 40 tooth gear
with a chain. On the other end of this gear's axle
is another 40 tooth gear with
another chain going to a 16 tooth gear on a third
axle. This spins another 40.
This 40 turns an 8 tooth gear on a fourth axle,
which also turns a 24 tooth
crown gear, which turns an 8 tooth gear on a fifth
axle. This last axle has the
tire on it.

If you can sort that out in your mind, this means
the tire is spinning
{quickly}. Very, {very} quickly. It is fast enough
that trying to stop it with
your finger is very easy, and that's when the motor
stalls. Actually, it doesn't
technically stall; it still turns inside the clutch
gear, but it has to work
very hard to do so.

What advice can you give me to avoid breaking any
more motors? The clutch gear
works in normal gear trains because the motor
doesn't have to work very hard to
begin with: it spins quickly and produces lots of
torque farther down the line.
But here I'm doing the opposite. If I had an RC
motor I would try using that,
since they are more powerful, but right now I'm
stuck with normal 9V motors. Oh,
I also have one of those weird motors (no axle, but
an axle hole) from the
monkey set, but I don't know how it compares to
regular ones.




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