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Motor Progress

Added by Nat Jeffries over 12 years ago

Hi mechanical team,

For now, I'm in charge of propulsion, so here's a recap on our current progress:

Yesterday (Monday 10/10) we finished assembling the Bollard tester. We found a pulley and, since we have no tension scale, are testing how much weight attached to a string the motor can lift when turned on. Using a power supply, we did some preliminary tests and determined our current bilge pumps are much more powerful than we expect the motors we ordered to be (over a pound of thrust). Next Monday at 7, if that works for most people, we should plan on improving our current rig and completing a bollard test for all waterproof motors we can find. Hopefully the waterproof motors we ordered will come in by then, but if not we can still do a complete test of our bilge pumps at various voltages. Next time we can also begin to think about experimenting with propeller designs. Any research about bollard testing techniques and how we can improve our rig would be great. Also, people working on the mechanical side of things should try to get shop trained asap, since we do lots of machining.


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RE: Motor Progress - Added by Nat Jeffries over 12 years ago

Last Monday (10/17)we finally got our hands on the new motors. It turns out they are in fact motors designed for rc jets using ducted fans, and not designed to be submerged in water. After doing our best to waterproof one of the two motors, we tested it in a bucket of water. It provided a decent amount of thrust, but cut out after about 20 seconds of running. It began working again a couple of times, but in the end it appears we shorted the motor by letting water in. It looks like we will need a better setup for waterproofing our motors, and it looks highly likely we will need a different kind of motor altogether. Hopefully we can find some rubber gaskets and hydroelectric grease for next week. I also hope we can start thinking about the assembly we will use when mounting motors on the robot itself.

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