Regular, high-speed, or torque motors for the wheels.

My team is finally finishing our base, and we are still on the fence about whether we should use regular, high-speed, or torque motors. Does anyone have any opinions on the matter?

My opinion is that faster is better as long your drive train can handle it. What drive and how many motors are you using?

This depends on your drive, but I would probably start with speed motors and go from there.

4 motors, with an omni-wheel holonomic base.

if you are using 2.75 inch wheels and keep it under 10 pounds you can use turbos. but hs and any size wheel is a safe bet.

Turbos doesn’t seem like a safe bet though, because of the fact that we will have to be able to get through stars on the floor.

High speed motors looks to be the way to go, usually the norm for our robots. (Unless you want to use some external gearing, then you’ll need to manually calculate gear ratio and go from there).

The fastest you can get away with is generally the answer.

The wheel size matters a ton for the internal and external gearing on the drive wheels as it massively effects the torque needs. The mid-size holonomic wheels with internal speed gears seems to be the preferred choice these days by our teams. Weight matters a ton in being able to pull it off - both from the overall mass and the location of the center of gravity for the robot in a holonomic drive.

Doubling up motors is the other method to get a bunch more torque and allows you to use even faster gearing.

We are planing to build an x-drive for starstruck with 3.25 inch omni wheels and 4 high speed motors. As long as you keep your robot relatively light that drive will work just fine

You could do a high-speed motor x drive on 4 inch wheels, but you would need a really light robot, <14 lbs. This setup is about the same ratio as a 4 turbo motor tank drive on 4 inch wheels.

I’m planning on running 2 x Planetary Gearboxes but having troubles with prototypes.
Not because I want speed and torque I just want to do something new.

Good luck with your work, but I think it might be better to follow the advice of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Unless you have something substantial to gain from planetary gearboxes (aside from the learning experience and show), I would recommend going with tried-and-true. If you have an idea already and planetary is just the way to make it work, then by all means you should build it :slight_smile:

Yeah I’m purely doing it because it’s something to learn about.
Having a bit of trouble but it’s all about the learning.

If I was to build the same robot every single time without trying something new then where’s the learning in that.

They are cool, definitely cool… But that’s about it. Trust me, I tried it. But it is a good learning… I guess…

https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/1915531_452868448230320_6023765647292011792_n.jpg?oh=98e125fb33c5dade16f5e547cdeeac61&oe=57DB0F83

Are there three planetaries in there?

3 too many…