Motor Overheating Prevention

[Vex3859]

At our competition this weekend, our drive motors struggled with overheating during the finals match. Is there any easy way to prevent over heating in motors?

Specs: 200rpm, 2motor Drive, the robot is heavier (don’t know the exact weight)

I know 2m drive isn’t optimal, but we threw together the bot quickly, and have a tournament next weekend, and need an easy solution…

[RoboKnight]

how easy is it for you to move your 2 drive motors?

@Foster

3. If it’s a construction problem – post a picture. We are not going to steal your amazing design that you are on the forum asking for help with. It apparently doesn’t work, so a picture isn’t going to kill you.

• Maybe two pictures of either side?

4. If it’s code post the code.

• Use the code tags [code] or use three ’ marks on the front and back to show us. Unless you are using blocks, don’t post a screen shot, post the code.
• Post all the code. Showing five lines of code that you don’t think are working isn’t helpful, your issue may be someplace else.

Please put your code and pic of your bot.

[Cadaver_42]

Do you have the motors for a 4 motor drive? another solution is to gear down your drive to give you less speed but more torque. Or if you want to lose a lot of speed, switch to 100 rpm motors.

[Vex3859]

Our current plan is to swap to 100rpms, we would do 4 motor but one of our sister teams has burnt out 5 motors in 2 months so we don’t have any spares…

[Cadaver_42]

How may I ask did they manage to do this? They might want to reduce the mechanical stress on their motors.

[Vex3859]

Long story short, instead of finding a way for their arms (complex tray bot) to stay up on their own, they just would constantly power them at ~5-20%, so after 20-30 minutes of hard driving they would give out, also probably poor construction.

[RoboKnight]

Did they fix this?

Also, try the motors again, V5 sometimes fixes its self.

[Vex3859]

Jury’s still out, but they haven’t murdered a motor in a month so… probably.

[darkness]

COMPRESSED AIR! I luv it

We had a competition today, and compressed air baby

[Vex3859]

Ironically I did start asking some of the other teams in the pit in the 3 minutes between matches, none had any…

[MathisTotallyFun]

I have 2 suggestions:

1. When practicing, practice in short amounts of time, or practice in 1 large chunk of time way before a match and allow your robot to cool down before it.

2. Get compressed air, and make sure it is usable when you flip it upside down (when flipped upside down the compressed air produces ice). And after practicing or a match, use it to cool down your motors.

After the competition I would rebuild (depending on when your next competition is, remember to plan your time out wisely) your robot into a 4 motor chassis so they won’t have the same problem anymore.