Multi Motor Drivetrains

I am new to Vex and I have learned that using gears with a motor allow you to increase Torque or Speed. I do not understand why people build Drivetrains with gear trains connected to more then 1 motor. How would adding another motor effect anything if they move at the same speed.

It helps with pushing power and overheating. It can also allow for faster drivetrains since more motors = more strength/torque

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It’s so the motor won’t burn out, and if it does burn out you have to replace he motor/ cartridge, or your drive train will be slower and less powerful.

Just keep in mind that having a 2 motor drive isn’t terrible because it saves you extra motors, and if you gear your motors to have more torque (especially with a blue motor cartridge) you will have less of a problem with the drive train having too little power.

Also if anyone has more info about this please let me know if any of this information is incorrect.

Hope this is useful

Alex 61170D

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Gear ratios are the proportion between the number of teeth of two gears that mesh. These ratios determine the speed and torque that are transmitted between the axes of the gears. If you increase the speed, you will have less torque, but if you increase the torque, you will have less speed.

To illustrate this, imagine that you have a robot with a drive system. If you have only one motor per side and each motor spins at 200 RPM, that does not mean that your robot will run at that speed, because there are other forces that slow it down, such as friction or the weight of the robot.

And it is very likely that only one motor per side is not enough to support the whole weight of the robot. Then you could add another motor on each side. So, instead of having only two motors holding all the weight of the robot, now you have four motors, so the stress is shared among the four instead of just two.

So, even if it is the same gear ratio, the simple fact of having more motors will give you more speed and torque. The speed and torque are limited by your gear ratio, you cannot get more than that.

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Can you tell me how adding more motors increase torque. If their are 4 gears, with the 1st and 3rd gear being powered by 200 rpm motors to drive the 4th gear, how is that different from another scenario where only the first gear is powered by one 200rpm motor to drive the 4th gear. Why would the torque of gear 4 in both scenarios be different.

This is iffy. I have never seen a vex game where you need 6 motors for different mechanisms and can’t use PTOs. The only reason you would want to use a 2 motor drivetrain is if you don’t have access to enough motors.

To the OP, more motors = more push power = less burnout = good.

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It would depend on the ratio between the gear that the motor is spinning, and the gear that that gear is spinning. If the number of teeth on the motor’s gear is smaller than the one that it is spinning, then you will have more torque. It’s the same thing for speed just reversed, more teeth → less teeth = more speed.
I ripped this image off of one of the pages of the digital notebook template which is pretty helpful in describing gear ratios:

Hope this helps explain it a bit more!

- Henry 344E

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I know that there not ideal.
I was mostly just saying that if you had to use a 2 motor drive then it would be possible. Just not something that is something that you should unless you need to save every motor you can.

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