Our robot is ridiculously heavy and we know we should change our drivetrain from a 4 5.5W motor, 4 wheel drivetrain to either a four 5.5w motor 6 wheel train (for weight distribution or a 2 11W motor (high torque cart) 4 wheels train, any opinions from anyone on which to go with, or better options?
66w drivetrain (6 motors).
4, 6, or 8 wheels are good, as long as two of them are traction wheels.
Never settle on a drivetrain with less than 66w (or 55w if you’re pushing it) of motors, especially this year.
This is an interesting scenario. Just be to clear, I’m assuming you want to use either 4, 5.5 watt motors or 2, 11 watt motors. Again, as Gigahertz.t said, you really should be using more 11 watt motors for you drive if you can. At the ABSOLUTE bare minimum, you should generally be using a 44 watt drivetrain (4 11 watt motors) and more if you can, but I can understand if you can’t do that right now.
In your case, I would recommend using 4, 5.5 watt motors with the 6 wheel drive, and to run them directly. Still mesh them together with gears (probably 60 tooth gears) if you can. I’m assuming you are using 4 inch wheels, but please tell me if I am wrong.
From there, you should try to decrease the weight of your robot so that your drivetrain can handle it. Most robots this season (unless if it is the weird dual basket mechs that very few teams are making) should not be that dense. Consider removing unneccesary things or a redesign if necessary.
With all of that, you should have a robot that works at least decently well at competition.
No… not imo.
2 5.5w motors are more inefficient than 1 11w motor. Don’t use them on drivetrains… I’ve tried (both as a 55w and 77w drive).
Stick as many 11w motors on your robot if possible. The rest of your robot won’t matter at all if the other team’s 66w drive can just push you across the field and bully you away from scoring.
Especially since your robot is heavy, you’ll be a slug around the field. You can’t score because 1) you’re too slow to accelerate towards balls, 2) you’re too slow to accelerate to goals, 3) you won’t be able to push opponents away from your goals, and 4) the opponents will just see you and play ping-pong with your robot. Remember, with a 22w drive, they have THREE TIMES as much torque.
Huh. Never realized that, probably because I’ve never used 5.5 watt motors before. I just relied off the numbers and went from there, my bad for that. @Sharp, please disregard what I said there for the most part.
My concern is the motors are red motors, I think. @Sharp says high torque cart, which is why I assume that. I guess something that I didn’t consider though, is what gears does this person have? If you can gear up those red motors, then yes, go with with what @Gigahertz.t says above. If @Sharp only has green motors, I would personally run them directly still meshing them with gears if you can.