Glad to hear that your students have found success. I'm just curious, how would you connect such a motor directly to the wheel? If the wheel is placed directly on the motor shaft, wouldn't it be necessary to use to separate motors (assuming the optimal 4 wheels, 2 wheel drive in the back), one of them being synchronous (but since its synchronous is compatible with AC, idk how this would work) ? I am curious as to what your plan is.SPP SciO wrote:Just wanted to share some info that may not be helpful for elite teams but may help a team trying to get started -
My students spent a lot of time experimenting with a variety of plastic gears and simple 6v hobby motors. Limited success, mostly because they found it really hard to make all the pieces cooperate, so everything that “worked” was less than ideal. I sprung for this: https://www.servocity.com/970-rpm-econ-gear-motor and they used it to directly drive a wheel. I don’t have any time data to share but it’s much quicker than anything else that they tried. Getting it to run straight was a challenge they quickly figured out how to solve.
In general as a coach I’ve found that if you lack the tools (and knowledge and skills...) to scratch build something well, it’s worth looking at a single vendor for off the shelf supplies. Looking through the servocity site for example, my students can shop for all the parts they’d need, and I can order them knowing it’s money well spent since all the pieces are compatible. The mixing and matching, especially if you don’t have bins of spare parts, is an expensive and time consuming process.
Also, I was wondering how your students were able to get their vehicle to run perfectly straight with so much ease. From what I have done, no matter how accurate you think your vehicle is, it will never go perfectly straight, resulting in the need for "dynamic" steering...
