My team is working on a flywheel, currently just the gearbox, and we are struggling a little bit. The flywheel is powered by 4 standard v5 motors and has a 1:96 gear ratio. When we power it we only get 100 rpm out of the motors, and if we connect it to our flywheel it will only get around 25 rpm. I’m wondering what I can do to reduce the friction on it, I have a washer on any metal on metal contact I have built it so there is “wiggle” room for the gears so there is not too much friction on the gears and there are 2 bearings to each shaft as you’d normally do. Could it not be friction and it just can’t be done by 4 v5 standard motors? Any help would be appreciated
Pictures would help. And I’m just going to tell you right now that 1:96 is overkill. My team is running 1:30 right now and our bot can shoot full court.
Ya sorry, I was going to post pictures with this but I couldn’t access our robot. I know it’s a little overkill but i want to do it for fun. Now for me, it’s like a challenge to get it to work. When i get access to the robot i’ll add pictures that will be in about 3 days.
Well, check your bearings. I’ve gotten a lot of friction out of bearing flats because the little tabs were bent inwards.
Problem is simple: ratio too high.
First off, your gearbox is probably very inefficient, leading to you not having enough torque to drive it past 100 rpm.
Second, the motors obviously don’t have nearly enough torque to drive the flywheel, so lower the ratio significantly.
You likely need to figure out how to reduce a lot of the friction in your gearboxes.
This same sort of problem happened to me and then I realized that the motors were turning in opposite directions. Check to make sure that they all are spinning in the correct direction.