Motor Speed - Louisiana team

[BoltBandit]

We were viewing the world championships and came to question how people make their robots go so fast? It doesn’t make sense. If they used high speed motors then they wouldn’t accelerate that quickly and the motors would overheat faster, but if it were green motors it would be difficult to achieve that speed. How do they make them go that fast?

[9MotorGang]

Teams use gear ratios and different wheel sizes to achieve speeds in between 43 in/sec and 129in/sec. Also keep in mind most teams run 6 motor drive due additional torque (and thus accel) or even 8m drive.

[Carson_Ludwick]

They are probably using a gear ratio that is geared up for speed. You could use a green motor to achieve this and that will give you more torque when it’s geared up. Another way is that you could use a blue motor cartridge and whenever it is geared it will give you more speed but less torque. It all depends on the motor cartridge and the gear ratio that you use. Most people use fast gear ratios because they have a de-score bot and others use it just to move around faster. As a suggestion, don’t use a red motor cartridge on your drivetrain, ever.

[Gigahertz.t]

@BoltBandit

how people make their robots go so fast?

Catalogue of Drive Gearings

Due to frequent questions and discussions on drive speeds, but not a lot of resources on the layouts of the possible gearings themselves, I’ve created this resource for people to see a catalogue of drive speeds that I’ve deemed as viable, and some commentary on each layout. All drives shown here are on 6 motors, and all drives here are compatible with center traction wheel. (some drives have 8 wheels so traction will be offset from center). The layouts shown can easily be translated to 4 motor …

Gearing down or direct drive 600 rpm motors are usually used for higher (>60 in/sec) ratios).

@BoltBandit

If they used high speed motors then they wouldn’t accelerate that quickly and the motors would overheat faster

Most teams using a high speed ratio (>70 in/sec) are using 77w or more of blue motors. Plus, due to the hanging this year, people are building their bots lighter than usual, and lighter robots = delayed overheating.

[Carson_Ludwick]

There is a team called Hailstorm and they have a descore bot. It has an 8 motor drivetrain and pneumatics control everything else. They have videos posted about how they do it, their strategy, and what their drivetrain looks like all over Youtube. Their drivetrain doesn’t run on any gears and is just a blue motor cartridge inside of their motors. I don’t know how they do it but they are able to go under the net and push the triballs out of it with ease. I don’t understand how they will get it to work on the tight fields that will be used at worlds but it works. This should also help answer your question. Heres what their bot looks like.