I’ve been using the vex shaft collars but they (or my screw drivers are stripping. Either way, they’re annoying) . I sometimes have a hard time tightening down on them. Does anyone have a legal replacement for A: the whole thing or B: the set screws (that wont strip in the future).
P.S: I also have a problem with the tiny screws for the motors and will get screws with bigger heads from McMaster Carr soon.
P.P.S: VEX, could you please find a solution to this? (;
Here you go! These are a bit thicker, but I think you’ll find them considerably more difficult to strip out than their older counterpart.
http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex/products/new/276-3891.html
Cheers, Bryan
In many (not all) situations you can use a standard 3/32 head vex screw in the old style shaft collars instead of the 5/64 head grub screw. This won’t let you put a shaft collar between a motor and a piece of metal, for example, because the screw takes up too much space, but as far as I know it should work in pretty much every situation where the clamping shaft collars will work and has the same advantages.
Also, make sure you keep your allen keys sharp. if they start getting rounded, you can take the end off with a file or similar to make them fresh again. Of course, this requires that you have allen keys that have a constant cross-section. Vex has started making some of the screwdriver-handled ones so that they taper at the end which is awful for exactly this reason and they should stop making them immediately, so hopefully you don’t have any of those.
Also, avoid using the ball headed allen keys where you don’t have to. One you’ve rounded one of those, it’s dead forever.
Once your grub screws get rounded, throw them out. Using rounded grub screws makes you more likely to round your allen keys, and more likely to end up with a permanently stuck shaft collar.