Here’s a picture of the design I found online, and so I remade it only using one motor at the top. However, when I add a wheel at the top of the axel like in the picture, there’s not enough torque to turn it the way I want to, and the motor overheats extremely fast. (I’m using the VexV5 smart motors, not these in the picture) So I’m wondering, do I add that other motor on the other side of the axle/drive shaft, or do I change one of the 12 tooth gears to A 24,36, or 48? I could also do both. And based on some feedback from other students, they say that they can “Hear the friction”
What cores are you using in your motors? Those old motors spun a lot slower so they had to be geared up a lot for speed. If you are using the same gear ratio you are running 1:25 which even with a green core is 5000 rpm (for reference most flywheels in Spin Up were only 3000-4800 rpm). Doing a 1:5 on blue cores (3000 rpm) should be fast enough for most purposes. If you explained what you were using this for and if it needs to spin this fast there are other ways to fix friction issues.
I would lower the gear ratio, as motors overheat quickly in heavy use, and if your intake fails, your kind of cooked.
And yeah that’s your problems.
When spinning a flywheel, you should only hear the sounds of the motor spinning + maybe some slight gear meshing noise. If you hear any clinking or metal-on-metal noise, your shafts/bearing flats are out of alignment and are rubbing against the c-channel.
And like 74100dEli said, that shooter is insanely fast for only being powered by one V5 motor. Older motors spun much slower and needed a higher gearing, but if you’re using a 200 or 600 rpm cartridge, that may be too much for even a V5 motor. If it has no flywheel weight maybe it could handle the load, but another motor and reducing the last gear to a 48 or 36t one would help immensely with that torque issue.
A picture and video of your design would be really helpful here to pinpoint the exact cause.
So I did a test, I added the wheel, and the motors have to power up a bit, but that’s fine. So now I just have to replicate it, and I’ll have a working flywheel. Hopefully.