Okay I’ve built most of a robot, shown in the first image, but I have to build a way to hit the mid and high flags. I have this mechanism here but its booty (second image). I’ve decide to build it like in the third image, which is a drawing depicting my chainbar cap flipper, drive system, intake, and what will be my launcher, as well as an index roller for feeding the balls into the launcher. The current design is a two wheel flywheel, but its being changed to a single wheel flywheel. There are 4 drive motors, 2 intake motors (1 intake and 1 index motor), and one motor operating the cap flipper. that means i have used 7 of the 10 motors already, which leaves 3 to power the launcher. My first question is how should i do the gearing to make it most efficient. i want all three motors on one side, the weight of the flipper motor, cortex and battery will balance it out.
Im not a programmer, but i hear that i should accelerate the motors to speed over time, instead of having them either 0 or 127. something slew rate something ratchet something avoid burning through internal motor gears. How do i do that?
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![20181205_115409[1].jpg](https://www.vexforum.com/uploads/default/original/2X/5/57d04733cd4a88deb4f8f1592d95914f624f5c7f.jpeg)
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I don’t know how you would power a launcher with 3 motors. The most you would ever have to use would be two 393s on a single flywheel.
Protecting your internal motor gears is mostly reliant on how you stop your flywheel. If you immediately stop the motor from running, your flywheel will have enough velocity to turn the motor even though it’s not running, damaging the internals. Easiest way to stop this issue would be to use a ratchet, although it’s possible to have code that could gradually slow down your flywheel motors once you’re done with them (aka slew rate).
Check this video for an example of a ratcheting mechanism: link
You can do the same thing in code when speeding up the flywheel, except a ratchet probably won’t help you as much there.
I have all three motors on one side meshed together with 60 toothe gears, and driven from there with a 1:21 gear ratio. Spins at 24.93mph. I have it mapped to run at 0, 20, 40, then 127 using the buttons on the right side of the controller. Manually accelerating and decelerating, going up or down in the sequence. Not as smooth as i would like, but with three motors theres enough redundency that if one goes out im not dead in the water. And i have some frankenmotor donors im bringing to competition, so if i need to hotswap some internal gears i have em.
Are you planning on using pneumatics? The cortex motor count is 12 without them.
In my opinion, flywheels aren’t the best option. We started using one, but they do burn through motors fast due to the fact that they aren’t extremely powerful. But, if you really like flywheels, try to make sure that the axles and spacers are loose so that there is minimal friction, and maximum efficiency. I recommend a puncher, or a catapult because they don’t stress the motors as much. And @Scrublam was right, you do have 12 motors to use unless you’re using pneumatics.