How many motors should i use for this years challenge in my drivetrain?
a 2 motor drive will be a real disadvantage, with defensive play being pretty viable this year and there being a ton of game pieces to plow through, a 4 motor drive is a better option.
1 Like
Two would be best in my opinion, with V5, it gives you an extra two motors to work with as opposed to a 4 motor drivetrain, and my experience from last season was that a well constructed gear system worked fine to make a two motor.
2 Likes
Real men do a pneumatic scuffler drive.
Seriously, I unfortunately feel that if you don’t have at least 3 (strafe wheel), I don’t think you will survive being pushed around. I would just do 4.
2 Likes
I see, but using 4 motors only would be tough for all the mechanisms. its lot like 393 with 12 motors
I’m decently new at vex and am a middle school team, wdym by a well constructed gear system.
could you dm me some more info?
Are you just trying to be a DR4B with a claw? If so, at most, you would need 2 motors for the lift, and one for the claw. I don’t know how much you want to attempt as a middle school team, however.
Well-constructed means that (unlike my team did originally), you have a good gear ratio (google what that means, my best example is the gears on a bike) and your gears are not too tight or too loose (too tight together and they won’t turn properly, too loose and they will grind).
ok i see
thank you
(20 character limit)
if you have any idea of what you want the rest of the subsystems to be, we can help you try to work out your motor distribution.
2 Likes
That would be really helpful, I have a few ideas, some may be really hard to accomplish but we’ll see once we start building
Using a two motor drive train will give you the extra motors if you need them. There are drawbacks, but nothing the average team can’t overcome, in the end it is your call.
let’s be honest here, just do 4 motors. The leftover 4 is plenty for other subsystems, be it a strafing wheel, a 1 motor lift, or an intake/claw.
1 Like
There are two answers to this question. The first is rather obvious - I would assume that a standard drive train design for any year is a four motor drive train, period. Though v5 motors are stronger, a two motor drive simply cannot compete with a four motor drive train from v5 or cortex in terms of speed or torque. You place yourself at a disadvantage, especially taking into consideration that you add weight and downward force on your drive when moving two drive motors to other mechanisms.
HOWEVER.
Tower Takeover’s lack of expansion limits open up different design options, namely wall bots, cap bots, and tether bots. These three designs would probably utilize what I’d call non-standard drive trains given how these designs function. While I won’t go more in detail on wall-bots and cap bots (they are fairly self-explanatory), the concept of using a tethered drive in this years game may be reasonable considering the lack of a possession limit and expansion limit. A well-built tether could act as a hoarding bot, bringing cubes back to the protected zone for the main bot to stack them in the corner, while also functioning as a defensive robot if need be. Such a design would require no more than two motors for a tether drive, and given that the main robot would stay in the protected zone, it may be feasible to build a 2 motor drive in that scenario.
TLDR : If you’re building a robot for any year, a four motor drive is the gold standard and highly recommended in most, if not all, scenarios. However, the lack of an expansion and possession limit in Tower Takeover open up some designs with non-standard drives, notably a tether.
If anyone is interested I may create a post elsewhere on the forum about the design concept of a tether, or you can PM me for questions.
2 Likes
I understand what you mean, as most teams will go four motor drive, but our current design requires a 2 motor drive. If I find out that 2 motors isnt strong enough i’ll probably change designs and use a four motor drive.
we have a dr4b to stack stacks higher and to put into the poles, but another mechanism to stack stacks in our current design.