I have seen motors on a drivetrain going normally across the middle, but I have also seen many good teams stacking their motors either towards the back or the front of their robots and I was wondering what the benefits were of stacking them like that. I understand the weight benefits, but if it is using more gears isn’t that more friction?
I stack my back 2 motors to save horizontal space. I use a 15x15 bot frame. If you use a larger frame, maybe you will not need to stack 'em.
With a decently built drivebase, that 1 extra gear doesn’t actually cause that much more friction, and I would be surprised if someone could actually tell the difference of a single additional gear on each side. The biggest reason that I know of for why teams might want to stack the motors is if they need the space those motors would otherwise be taking up for another mechanism, most commonly an intake ramp at the front of the robot.
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15 inches and yes, I use six 4 inch wheels. 15 holes is impossible in VRC. Or is it…
(Ignore the last wheel)
Don’t trap yourself into thinking linearly…
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If you think that’s bad, try seeing my cursed robot…
I had to disassemble half the left side to swap out a dead motor 
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this adds a lot of weight to the robot, which probably counteracts against the “less sunk in” advantage of wheels
Stacking motors adds the weight equivalent of 1 35 hole c-channel plus a few screws and whanot. The extra weight, if built right, is negligible
theoretically yes, but usually you’ll add at least another 35 hole c channel, if not a HS cross bar, to give it structure on top, in addition to your usual bracing.
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This question isn’t really that complicated, so I’m just going to boil it down to one sentence: Stacking takes up less space but is heavier
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It isnt much heavier though. If you do it right it should add about 3 or 4 ounces to you robo
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