this gave me an idea: ratchets on wheels
I would go with four, just because of the extra power. That way you can get to where you are trying to go without frustration and also build a bigger and heavier robot. Also, with defensive robots being viable options for this year, you will want to have the power to get past other robots, such as wall bots and cap bots.
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This is a common misconception.
If you calculate the speed based on the maximum free-rotating speed, it seems like an X drive would be faster. However, the motors are fighting each other, so they go slower.
The way to consider the math is as force vectors with is where you end up with 1/sqrt(2) .
I was conflating acceleration and top speed. They are not the same. See conversation below.
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What about a 6 motor drivetrain
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As @technik3k posted above, they do lose torque but they also gain speed. With the old legacy motors that may have been true do to them not being able to handle the extra pressure, causing to bog down, but the V5 system has more than enough strength to handle it, and I have seen a standard all omni drive that is directly driven goes to an X-drive and it is noticeably faster.
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Honestly I defiantly see some 6 motor designs popping up. Highly defensive strategies that will probably sacrifice either making stacks quickly or scoring posts quickly.
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X-Drives go faster, but have less torque.A X-Drive is about the same as having a 1.41:1 gear ratio. If you build 4 motor x-drive and a 4 motor base, the X-Drive will beat it in a race but lose in a pushing battle.
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I can see how that might be possible, especially at a light load. It would definitely be the case if the motors were being controlled by speed of rotation. Iād be curious to see the experiment done with a decent sized load.
Based on A = F/Mā¦ you know what top speed IS going to be faster on the X drive in a light load as long as the friction is the same. Iām pretty confident a regular drive will have better acceleration. Iād love to see a 12 foot drag race with both drives and a decent weight load.
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I donāt think itās reduced torque per say - although the effect is the same. The motors are twisting just as hard, but they are pushing at a 45Ā° angle, so force in the forward direction = force Ć Sin(45Ā°).
Same result though.
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this was a joke I posted a while below, but Iām thinking about it for real now: a 30 pound robot with 8 motors for drivetrain geared to insane ratios. Is this worth it?
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Mine was under the assumption that V5 is approx 2.5* stronger than a standard 393 motor.
for the 100RPM to 100RPM settings on both. The 200RPM setting is still overall stronger than the high speed gear set on the legacy motors, but not that much stronger.
Hi There,
I havenāt been here for a while, and missed this explosive conversation. Iāll try and sum up a few things that Iāve noted, as well as put in a few of my own views (instead of studying for exams)
- Holonomic or Not
In my opinion, itās never ben necessary to have a holonomic drive, and with v5, it has become increasingly popular to create holonomic drives (especially in turning point), because the limited field space and resistance to defense, as well as integrated velocity PID on the motors made creating drives with mechanums much more viable, however, for TT, you really need consider whether or not you need the extra mobility from side to side - the same motion can quickly be achieved with a good driver on a tank drive setup, and would only require a little bit more space, watch 574C or 929U lining up for shots in TP. - Power of the motors in pushing each other
Yes, v5 motors are more powerful than 393 motors, but there is still a limit to how much each motor can push - you wonāt have as bad of a situation of letās say turbo drives stalling against HS ones, but you will still lose a pushing battle against a stronger drive, but then I beg the question: how often are you going to push head to head, when thereās so much open space. If you think that youāll be doing it a lot, go for a stronger drive, otherwise, you can use less motors or gear down. If you think that your driver has the ability to control the robot well, and use physics to their advantage (pushing from a side / on an angle), a 2m drive will be just as effective as a 4m drive, it goes down to which driver can get the upper hand in positioning. - Speed
More motors does mean that you can get more power down - this means that youāll be able to accelerate quicker, reach top speed quicker (if at all), and keep travelling at that speed all the time. With a 2m drive, and a heavy robot, especially with quick direction changes and defense, I can quickly imagine that itāll become difficult to control. Think about it this way, if you have a bowling ball rolling down a track, itāll be a lot easier to stop it with your arm, rather than with your finger, because your finger can only do so much work. Same with the motors: both your finger and your arm can start moving the bowling ball, and both can stop it, but which one will take longer - do you need that time? or will you be able to make up for it by building a quicker scoring mechanism elsewhere.
Do also note that with the increase in power, you can gear up your drive - go past 200rpm to 250, 280, 330, or even 360 rpm on 4" or 3.25" omni wheels, which will allow you to move around the field quicker than the rest of the other robots. Obviously, on 2 motors, this would mean you take a while to get up to speed, and on 4 motors you would still be at a disadvantage compared to a 200rpm ābaseā drive, but then you think about how many small motions you make and how many bigger motions youāll make, and youāll have to make a decision to see whether you want faster acceleration to top speed or a higher top speed - for this season, youāre going to want some decent acceleration to get around defense, but i can imagine that thereās going to be a fair amount of straight up driving between towers, scoring zones, and rushing to stray cubes. - Other scoring mechanisms
Generally, the debate seems to focus a lot around how fast you can ācycleā, or how long it takes you to score x amounts of points. If you think you need more than 4 motors to create a super fast stacking thing, and then only 2 motors on your drive to get it there, thatās all the better for you, but generally, you can make things work with 4 motors. Even in turning point, where there were so many different objects to manipulate, teams managed to create wonderful ratcheted systems with even just 2 motors to do all their shooting, intaking, scraping, and cap lifting. with that in mind, given 4 motors, you should be able to complete at least 4 individual tasks, and looking at TT, you need to consider if you need more than those 4 tasks, and if you want more than 1 motor on each task - for example, you might want 1 motor to intake the cubes, 1 motor to stack them, 1 motor to out-take the stack, and 1 motor acting as an intake lift so that you can get the towers. - How to build the drivetrain
This is something that has been covered extensively throughout this post, where people have been talking about the advantages and disadvantages of chains and gearing. 2381C and 2381X used chains and gears to transfer power throughout the entire season, and we can confidently say that chain will work just as well as gears, you can look at our reveal if you want to see what we did. Chain will allow more versatile mounting, and it can snap, but it rarely did. The only time 2381X had chain snap was when 2381C literally broke the chain (they snapped an actual link in half by hitting us from the side, catching the chain, and pulling us around the field via the chain). Chain will have a little bit more slop on the drive, but you can use tracking wheels to easily counteract this - think pilons (5225a) in itz. Gears are more direct, but will also have a certain amount of slop - in fact, even direct driving has some slop - itās just how much you think is acceptable, given the number of field aligns you do, and the motions that you need to make. In driver control, the slop is basically not noticeable. I know that a well built chain or geared drive will have similar amounts of friction, so donāt worry too much about that. I think that, for you guys, if you want to explore, there is another option for the drive. Usually this type of drive isnāt done, because historically it has introduced a LOT of friction into the system, but as build quality generally gets better, itās something that you can start to explore. This is a 3m drive, where 2m power the wheels, and 1m powers a shifter to switch between high torque and high speed settings, allowing you to have good pushing power under defense, or high speed on an open field. The actual gearing ratios might be a little bit weird, but generally 5:3 and 3:5 back makes sense, on letās say a 200rpm drive. If you want to explore this option, be prepared for a lot of pushback from the community - itās difficult to do well, and nobody has done it well in VRC in quite a while. This type of drive would probably put one wheel as direct driven by gears, and the other wheel chained to the first wheel, similar to what 2381X for TP. In the same vein of that idea, letās say you only needed 3 motors for your scoring mechanism, then you could either create a 5 motor H drive, or a 5th motor as a transmission, to allow your robot to go between 3:5 and 5:3 on 200rpm, or perhaps 5:3 and 7:1 on 600rpm.
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3 wheeled drive. (Or in this case, 3 motored).
(Not mine, I just found it online)
Front 2 wheels are main power, and make it turn.
Also the back wheel would have to be an Omni wheel.
Probably not very viable, but it would work if you just had to have access to an extra motor. I think itās also known as an a-drive.
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Do not do a 2 motor drive. Vex is about what you can do, but also speed. If you can do something well and really fast and then play defense, you will do really well. I am using a 4 motor drive but this year I hope we see some tray stackers with 6 motor drives.
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Are there any teams that do this?
little spring-loaded sprocket like a carās belt tensioner?
why not 2 motors to a diff in the rear and 1 motor up front for ackerman steering? Or is that too complicated?
I got one of those for ya https://youtu.be/ux8r3FH2Zj8, probably not worth is, but it is definitely doable