Negatives to "Y-ing" motors?

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
#1

I hope this doesn’t sound like a stupid question, but I keep on doubting myself

I have always assumed there isn’t, but is there any difference to plugging 2 motors into 1 port using a y cable v.s. plugging the 2 motors into 2 separate ports on the cortex?

I always thought that the extra motor on that port would just pull more amperage from the breaker, making it just as strong and fast as one on a separate port.

I know this is true to a good extent, but is there any negatives to doing this other than both have to be going the same speed? We have 6 motors on our expander so the drive on the 2 cortex breakers have plenty of wiggle room.

Basically, is their any power loss even by a fraction of a volt by y -ing even though by theary they should be the same.

Again, sorry for the grit of this post.

#2

One negative is that you can’t invert one of the motors through the program, you have to do it by switching the polarity of the wires.

#3

The Cortex has 2 4amp PTCs inside, one for motor ports 1-5 and one for ports 6-10. So in terms of current draw, there would be no difference between having 1 motor on ports 1, 2, 3, Y-ing 2 motors off port 4, and leaving port 5 empty, as opposed to having one motor on each port. You will only draw more current if you use a Y-cable to have 6 or 7 motors drawing from the one PTC.

So in short, using Y cables doesn’t do anything to PTCs, unless you are plugging in more motors in total as a result.

#4