We are taking our robots apart from last year (sniff sniff). Should be refurb/lubricate our motors? If so, what it the best type of lubrication? What motor maintenance do you do?
If you had any flywheels (odds are you did), Than i would check the gears…
Actually, no flywheels but some of our motors took a beating anyway!
Plop down $15 and get a new one if you suspect it is not as good as it should be. I consider motors semi-disposable when they are used in rough situations the prior year. Many times it is safer to have another spare motor handy.
I would recommend to look thoroughly at all your motor gears by opening the black motor plate, NOT THE GREEN, and replacing any that are chipped or such. After you do that, lubricate all your gears with White lithium grease(that’s what works well for us at least, so someone please correct me if i’m wrong) and rub it on all the gears. Here is a link to a video that explains this well(at least the lubrication part) , and the link to motor gear replacements
I’m curious why you say “not the green”. There are two removable gears under each cap (black and green). I would guess that 90% of the time that we have gear failures it is one of the gears under the green cap. Very rarely do the two under the black cap fail for us.
Is there something you are afraid of damaging under the green cap? Because I can assure you it is perfectly safe to open either side.
I agree. Last season, we had every motor on my robot’s flywheel fail during the first day of testing, and every time it was due to the same gear on the “green” side of the motor. It was the second gear in the system (not including the drive gear directly attached to the motor itself). Once we replaced them with old replacement gears they were fine, and never failed again. The newer version of that specific internal motor gear seems to fail more easily. I have never had problems with any of the other internal motor gears, and hadn’t had any motor failures until this season.
On some of the motor gears underneath the black cap that don’t have a hole for an axle, the smaller side would rotate independent of the larger side (i.e. powering the motor did nothing, because the larger side would spin and not move the smaller side).
I agree with those above me. The same gear you guys had fail is the one we had issues with several times this year. I wish we could buy just that second gear instead of the whole refurb kit.
Same exact gear for us as well. Interesting, apparently that gear happens to be the weak point.
I think the weakness moved up the chain as the front side gears have improved from the powder metal versions a few years ago. I don;t see any visible differences in that gear’s design. I believe it is now the weakest link in the internal gear train.
I have never had a problem with the gears behind the green cap, but thanks for the input