Gear efficiency with VEX V5 motor cartridges

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
#1

When reading about vex cartridges and how they gear down with planetary gear sets, I noticed that in a thread, someone said that the 600 RPM Cartridges have one less planetary stage. Would I be correct to assume that 600RPM Cartridges have less friction than a 200RPM or 100RPM Cartridge, and therefore they also have more output power (output power doing different things, obviously the 600’s would have less torque than 200’s). Side tangent, what is the gearing efficiency of Vex high strength plastic gears? I’ve head for normal spur gears, such as ones used on cars it can be up to 97% efficient, but this is with all of the friction reduction techniques that are in a car’s transmission.

Thanks in advance!

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#2

I’m going to more or less agree with what you are NOT saying.

If you use a 200 rpm motor, and gear it UP for increased speed, then a 600 rpm motor would be slightly more efficient.

The gear set feeding the planetary cartridge turn fast. So with 200 rpm, you are gearing down, only to gear back up… hence for high speed operation the 600 rpm cartridge should be more efficient.

This is really an ‘on paper’ observation. My bet is that real world testing would show the gains to be minimal. The more important gains are in compactness, robustness, etc.

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