How do you keep the pins on a 393 Motor from breaking off due to rough handling?
I have just taken 2 motors out of storage and they have 1 pin each.
You are doomed! If you find a solution, let me know.
We were thinking of getting a bulk lot of the male connectors for the motor pins and keeping them on the end with tape to keep them safe
I always keep the VEX clip for wire connections on any sensor and motor ends.
For a small project, I did CAD up some “pin caps” that are intended to be 3D printed. I haven’t printed them personally for testing, but the CAD model of the motor pins say everything should line up.
That’s an option, we will add some to our next order
We may do something like that in future once we get a 3D printer
Isn’t that illegal due to R7k saying “commercially available”?
Yes, Karthik ruled on that during Nothing but Net.
Yes but these are used for storage to prevent damage while off the robot. When on the robot they would be secured in a legal fashion
I have had a problem with pins breaking while on the robot most of the time. If they are put in a box the pins shouldn’t break…
The motor plugs fit into Arduino headers which will shield the pins. I just checked mine (Freetronics brand from NZ/AUS ) and they work - but any Arduino stacking headers should work too. They must cost next to nothing on eBay.
It also helps to wrap up the wire around the motor to make a neat little “bundle”; we find this also reduces tangling and so we can basically dump our sensors and motors in their respective boxes and pull them out individually when needed.
As clarified by someone else on the thread, these would only be on the motors when they are off the robot or not at competition.
Just look up 2 wire male plugs for breadboards. These should work and be legal since they are pretty much identical (except most don’t have a bit sticking out the side), and they will definitely fit because the female connectors on the cortex have the same 0.1" spacing as a breadboard. This is only if you need to replace them. To keep them from breaking off, maybe take a small piece of styrofoam and stick the pins into it while the motor is being stored.
At world’s I went up with @Harrison2 to have them fix pins at Tech support , and rather than replacing the entire connector they popped the blue piece off and replaced the pins. I haven’t tried this yet but it seemed much simpler than replacing the entire connector.
Yep, you need to have molex crimpers though, and the good ones are quite pricey.
You can get replacement pins here cheap: https://www.pololu.com/product/1931 and the crimper here https://www.pololu.com/product/1928. You can get new housings here too but like they said earlier; instead use a razor to lift the metal tab holding the pin in place while pulling the wire out from the housing. Then you can reuse the housing which is legal and has the tab which locks under the cortex insert.
Thanks for that, Will look into ordering some of them.
Do you know where to get housings?
These don’t have the keyed part, but they would still work just fine.