In my school, what we usually do with our new motors is to “train” them – we mount them to a base and start driving it around the field. The idea behind it is to get the new motors “used” handling forces and loads.
I was wondering if any other teams do this, and what is the actual physics behind this practice.
Somehow, when our school “trains” the motors, their ammeter reading becomes more stabilized, ensuring stable current flow so the motors would not be as weak:)
Think the proper term should be break-in or run-in the motors.
We just don’t have so much budget to perform this :o
Hmm, I’ve never heard of doing this before
From what I understand from testing from a tachometer, a motor(especially vex motor), has a certain ‘lifetime’.
BIRTH:
At the start, after it has just been manufactured by the factory, everything is in new condition. Hence, although the electrical components are working in the best state, the motor is not physically. This is due to possible extremly minute faults in the drilling of he holes in the motor, aligning the rotor’s axle perfectly, e.t.c. Hence the phyical fault → ^friction–> ^force required for motrs to move → ^ current flow/frequency in current spikes–> easier to stall when used in high power applications.
ADULTHOOD:
At this point of time, is the optimum whereby the electronic components are still in working condition and continuously training the motors causes the physical faults to be removed. Therefore, maximum efficiency, best motor state.
OLD AGE:
This is when despite ur physical faults removed, ur electronic components begin to become faulty. 2 ways. Either the insulation of the litz wire melt or your whole coil melts–> decrease in force produced by a fixed amount of current–> nid more current to generate enough force–>ptc trips causing stalling.
DEATH:
When a motor becomes so useless that u jus rip everything apart to see how cool it is before checking it into the bin. Motor is dismantled and in garbage dump. -->No voltage across motor → absolute 0 current flow
REVIVAL:
Buy a new motor and repeat the cycle.
The grease in the motor would also get more evenly spread during the first few minutes of run time.
From your experience, is the default grease reliable? What’ve I’ve always done is to remove the grease and then re-grease it with other types of grease like WD-40 and Super Lube.
I never had any problems with the original grease.
FYI WD-40 is a degreaser so it is exactly NOT what you want to use to make motors spin better
Additionally, WD-40 is illegal, so don’t use it 
Aerosol WD40 is illegal, but you can get non aerosol liquid WD40 that would be legal. But I don’t know if it’s a good idea to use that in a motor, I would be too worried about it dripping into the electronics, and it probably would help much less than the factory grease.
Do you know the best way to “train” the motors to reach its best state?
WD-40, to my knowledge, is a lubricant, so even if it removes the grease it still lubricates the gears (I’m not 100% sure of this)
Just to make sure, would this be considered as non-aerosol?: http://wd40.com/products/multi-use/non-aerosol/trigger-pro
The main reason I always used WD-40 (especially in real life) is because you have the feeding tube to feed it into even the tiniest of gaps. This feeding tubing would definitely also help in VEX, but as far as I know there is no way to feed greases like Super Lube into the feeding tubes because they come in tubes (like toothpaste) by default and are generally very thick.