Dying motors

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
#1

Recently, 2 of our motors on our x drive have died out; when we turn on the device tab brain, the died-out motors aren’t there in the corresponding spot, and it just shows an empty slot even when the motor is attached. This was fixed by replacing motors, but this has been happening consistently. My friend brought the motors home and told us that it was the circuits that broke, not the motors. Our drivetrain also slows down eventually after 3 - 5 minutes of drive. I’m not sure if this is related to the problem, but I’d say that this is definitely also uncommon as our robot isn’t really all that heavy.

Any ideas on how to prevent this from happening?

#2

do you have any noticeable static electricity building up on your field or workspace? v5 electronics are very notorious for getting fried in this way. I lost a handful of motors and countless ports on my robot last winter when driving on our field, but absolutely none after getting the anti-static tiles. if you don’t have them already and they are within your budget, I’d recommend them highly. they’ve saved a lot more than we paid for them in broken electronics.

however, if you don’t have any static electricity in your workspace, it could be a different problem.

how did your friend determine this? did they take it apart and run the DC motor directly to determine that the motor itself was fine, or did they find anything visibly wrong with the electronics?

this sounds unrelated. motors can get tired very easily if you have excess friction in your drive, not just from a heavy robot, so I would check the friction on your drive as well. if it’s really bad, the stress on the motors could be what’s breaking them, although I’ve never experienced a motor getting damaged due to overheating.

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#3

Yeah, like Xenon said static is pretty rough on V5. Make sure you ground yourself out before touching the electronics.
Also like Xenon said, friction hurts X-drives more than other drive styles. I recommend doing the spin test on each wheel to get a general idea on how much friction you have.

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#4

I will look into friction on our drivetrain. We didn’t really catch any static electricity while carrying the robot from time to time though, so it’s either building up in the motors or another factor is causing the motors to die out.

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#5

Friction can kill motors. Decreases their life span or just burn them out depending how bad it is. Definitely check the friction. X-drives in particular will put a lot of stress on the motor if it’s lagging behind the others.

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