This is our first year with VEX IQ. My students built this year’s Swish robot for the Rapid Relay competition. After shooting about 5 balls the catapult motors are overheating and start to smell. Couple of our motors burnt up and can no longer be used. Any advice? The robot is built according to the directions.
Just make sure your not putting to much stress on the motors.
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The same thing happened to my team yesterday in the finals, we ended up getting third after it happened. We realized the velocity was set way to high and we ended up burning out 3 motors. I would check your velocity, if that is fine it must be something in your code, our one motor is just being overused.
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You should be able to have the velocity at max, but I’d need to see the appliances. For example, it may burn out if you do a speed ratio for a catapult. Your motors may barely pull the catapult down but it will stress the motors out like crazy. If I could see some of the appliances your using your motors for, it could be very helpful.
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Be sure you are using a ratchet to hold the cata down, not the motors.
Please post pictures. Close up from all the directions please.
Thanks.
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Are you using a single motor? We use 48t drive gears to turn the ratchet and 24t gears on the rope. One motor is always overheating, the issue went away after we install a second motor.
We had this issue too and what we did to fix the issue was add a gear system. This helped disperse the load, helped with torque and it takes tension off the motor directly. Without a picture: have a long driveshaft connected to the motor with 2 medium small toothed gears in the middle of the shaft. Then a second driveshaft that is lower that has 2 of the larger small tooth gears. You also attach your rubber/silicone bands to this shaft however you want and this is shaft is what will windup and create more tension for the higher shot. Good luck!
My team had this issue. We discovered it was because our rubber bands were too strong and they put too much stress on the motors. If the robot needs to go more than 2 tiles away from the goal to score the high goal, I suggest changing the rubber bands to weaker ones or using less rubber bands. If the robot needs to be close to the goal wall to score, try what @madisogl said and make sure your ratchet is geared for torque, not speed. Also, if you can still add another motor and there is only one motor pulling down the catapult, try adding another motor, like @chuowc said.
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