It has been five years since the 393 motors came out. The robots have grown in size and complexity. It is very difficult to build a competitive robot with tank tread since the motors do not produce enough torque to turn the robot and still have speed enough to compete. (We have tried for the last three years)
A stronger motor possibly limited for use with the drive would be nice.
Or if tank tread drive is used allow an additional 2 motors (12 total).
While this is a nice idea, I don’t know if it is practical. The Cortex is only capable of handling so much current. If I’m not mistaken it has two 4 amp PTC’s on the motor ports. (port 1-5 share one, while 6-10 share another)
Any higher current motors will inevitably result in the need for a new micro controller capable of delivering that current.
You can of course gear the current vex motors to use with tank tread. Obviously this will make them slower, but if you are set on using tank tread…you can still do it.
Personally I am ok with the 393 motors…VEX just needs to make sure the game they design is able to be played with the parts we have.
A vex robot has a limit on the power allowed. If your robot was constructed well enough it should be the same any other drive system. Also it just doesn’t seem to make any sense to incentivize worse designs.
Not a great need. Better robots actually would be built if the constraints were tighter as the solution would not always be throwing more power at it.
Think about Green Egg in Toss Up. Everyone had 10 motors to use. However, with some determination and a lot of designing, a robot can drive fast, push other strongest robots, hang/unhang itself in 2 seconds, while having two motors spared for intake. Even with greater torque motors, teams will still think about how to reach their maximum potential of these motors.
Having stronger motors for all teams wouldn’t make the competition easier/less competitive.
I think the power is just fine where it is. any more and a our robots could get dangerous. (in which i mean dangerous to be competitive and not out of bad design) as far as a special motor for extra torque, isn’t that what the 393’s originally were?. for those who weren’t around back then it used to you could only use up to four 393s on your bot and then use 269s or the three wired motors for the rest.
what I would like to see is a better form factor. or at least a alternative form factor. mabie something like the lego nxt motors
What about like a clutch gear box, mostly for wheels but maybe other uses, almost like in a car, with 3 gear ratios contained within, a 1:1, and 1 for strength, 1 for speed,
Build it. 
I would just like to see the quality control be a bit better on the motors they have.
Put your engineer hat on. “Quality” costs money – how much would you pay for a VEX motor?
I figure that our competition teams go through 10 motors per year. Maybe more if they go to worlds and have mechanisms that push the motors really hard. I would gladly pay $40-$50 a motor if they were high enough quality to last for multiple years and had built in servo style functions and more reliability. But maybe I’m as weird as my students say I am. . . .
My team has only broken a couple of 393 motors since they came out, and mostly due to the wires breaking, which is legal to fix.
I think that the current limitations of the motors encourage good design, instead of brute force.
I do think that a built in servo style (or better servos) woulod be nice though.
4th year of VEX. Never once burned out a motor. I think if you burn out a lot of motors, you are doing something wrong mechanically. Yes we have destroyed gears…many times. But that is fixable for cheap. We do have some motors that will probably soon be failing because of the low quality of the wires which are going to soon fray and short out.
On the contrary, I believe if you aren’t breaking any motors you aren’t pushing them hard enough. If you are getting the most you possibly can out of your robot, and practising for hundreds of hours every season then motors are going to break. At a guess I killed ~5 motors during the Toss Up season (1:2.4 drive) and at least 10 in Sack Attack (lifting a lot of very heavy sacks and driving around a very heavy robot).
That being said I’m pretty happy with 393 motors as they are, and I think continuing to just give teams more power to work with isn’t the best way to make a better competition. Working with (and around) limitations is one of the best challenges in VRC.
I think an interesting dynamic in the game would be allow teams to use either 10 motors (all can be 393’s like they are now) or a max of 6 393s and 6 269’s, adding to 12 motors but with less power on half of them. Because a 393 motor is about 1.6x the power of a 269, the 6 269s would have just slightly less power than the 4 lost 393s, but the power could be distributed in more places.
Of course to do this VEX would have to resurrect the 269 as I think it was discontinued.
What would be really neat would be if we were given some kind of a “power limit” rather than a motor limit. You could mix and match 269’s / 393’s / hypothetical super-motors in any combination you wished, with the main limiter being either motor power or current draw rather than actual physical numbers of motors. So you could have a whole lot of smaller motors or a handful of giant ones, or any combination in between.
We try to not push our motors past what they should be able to do. And we rarely actually “burn” them out. But between frayed wires, broken prongs, shorting out wires that cause the motor to not work we go through a fair number. We try to give our highly competitive teams newer motors so that they are less likely to have issues. then all our older motors go to new teams and our classroom sets of components. We are also still a growing program so it seems like we are always needing motors. And maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the motors get weaker over time.
I don’t think that the 393’s are horrible, but I think that a few small improvements that make it a little more durable and reliable would be worth some more money. I also wish that the integrated encoder was on the output shaft so it was more accurate. I have no desire to go back to 269’s, that was a bad nightmare that I don’t want to relive. I’m happy with 10-393’s.
I also think that in addition to turbo gears, they should give us crawler gears. Think of the gearing choices a .5, .6, or a .7 motor would enable us to create. Personally I think that would be awesome!!!
+1 to this. Cable channels are now legal and should prevent fraying in the long run.
The 393’s have come down in price over time and with the way they are protect you from more serious cortex-side damage in the PTC. If this changed and people complained about a $200 part versus a $20 part, then I would rather change out the $20 part all day. As long as you can get to it - those pesky tires can get in the way.
Treat these motors as semi-disposable. Do bench tests if you want to do quality control before adding them to your robot to cherry pick the best ones from the bunch.
I believe that if you are breaking motors you are not pushing enough on your engineering skills. 
The specs on what the motors will do is out there. Basic physics will tell you if you are asking those motors to go outside the specs.
On the FRC robots a key component is the transmission. It allows speed and torque of the motors to be matched to the load. We currently don’t have off the shelf transmissions, but as Tabor pointed out “build one” is a good strategy.
Earlier in the thread it was pointed out that the Eggs had not had problems. Green Egg robots that I’ve seen all had well thought out gear trains.
Better engineering skills is really what you need now.
I’m working on Robots with the VEX IQ motors that have smart controllers inside them. I’ll hazard that those style motors will make it into VEX Metal pretty soon.
the only problem with 269’s (other than power) is that they break and become weak much easier. i am sure i am not the only one who has noticed this. the 393’s are just better motors. they even make a better sound. i {think} the only big difference between the two is one is brushed while the other is brush less (393’s).
can anyone back me up on any of this?
i would be willing to pay 30.00-35.00 for a better quality motor. it would be hard for teams on a tight budget though.