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Subject: 
Re: Heavily modified 8880 chassis, succesfully motorised and solar powered.
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.technic
Date: 
Fri, 14 Feb 2003 12:58:47 GMT
Viewed: 
1977 times
  
Or you could put in additional LEGO motors to share the power and load.

If you buy a non-LEGO motor you will also face the sometimes difficult task of
attaching it to LEGO. You might need to glue bricks to the body so it can be
attached, the glue has to be temperature resistant. Heck, the motor might even
get warmer then what's healthy for your bricks. Not to mention the problems
with fitting a LEGO compatible gadget on the driveshaft that won't split in two
when the power is turned on. The bottle neck will move else where and the LEGO
will prove pretty weak.

You will also need to put the drive shaft in the correct distance if you are to
use gears directly on it. A good way might be using rubber bands and pulleys
since they don't require precise alignment. I don't think the LEGO chain could
handle the stress.

Still, I'd like to see when you reach the speed where the limiting factor will
be yourself, when the car is going faster then you can run along with the solar
panel ripping :)

Best regards,
/Tobbe
http://www.lotek.nu
(remove SPAM when e-mailing)

Pessimist, huh? ;)

Additional lego motors would probably make it go faster, yes, but not much
more efficient. Lego motor's efficiency is still rather low compared to the
'high tech' industrial motors, that go up to 90+% efficiency. I'd also need
another diff to properly share the load between the motors. I do have
another diff from another set (old style diff), but of course it's also an
additional source of friction...I'd rather not go that way.
Right now I'm already using a pulley directly on the motor to a wedge wheel
which (after another gear-reduction) goes to the gearbox. I don't see any
problems with using a non-lego motor. I've already tried it with another
(very poor) non-lego motor, and I just 'stick' it to the lego by putting a
rubber band around the motor and some lego parts, which holds it well
enough. No glue mess needed. So no problems with axle allignment, precision
placing, bad-meshing-gears, etc. A lego chain is totally out of the question
as its efficiency is completely disgusting. :)
Oh, and if the motor gets hot, that means a lot of energy goes into warming
it, which means its efficiency is bad. In other words, when I buy a
high-efficiency motor, I can safely assume it won't get warm, let alone hot.
Even my horribly abused old style 9v lego motor, that must have an
efficiency of about 5% now ;) doesn't get hot at all, so I'm quite sure heat
won't be a problem.

Oh, and I don't think the car will get to the point that it goes faster on
solar power than I can run....would be nice though, I'd have to use my bike
to keep up. :D

About lego not being strong enough...that could be a problem, yes...One of
the gears in the gearbox has already broken and I've had to replace it. It
was an old part, but still. If I use a stronger motor the torques on all the
gears will grow and I wouldn't be surprise if more gears died on
me...Outside from that, the geartrain has been working perfectly. I've had
plenty of pulleys being ripped apart, but the drivetrain does just fine. Of
course the lubricant helps there.



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Heavily modified 8880 chassis, succesfully motorised and solar powered.
 
(...) Hi Gillis, I have been following this thread with great interest since you first posted. My recommendation? Buy two of the new style Lego motors. They are very, very, very efficient. They will be much cheaper than an industrial quality motor, (...) (22 years ago, 14-Feb-03, to lugnet.technic)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Heavily modified 8880 chassis, succesfully motorised and solar powered.
 
(...) Or you could put in additional LEGO motors to share the power and load. If you buy a non-LEGO motor you will also face the sometimes difficult task of attaching it to LEGO. You might need to glue bricks to the body so it can be attached, the (...) (22 years ago, 14-Feb-03, to lugnet.technic)

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