Using 5.5 Watt Motors in Over Under - takeaways from Engr 101 with Matt

VEX V5 Robotics Competition
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Just left an awesome webinar, “Engineering 101” hosted by @Matthew_Goodwin ! Matt provided fantastic information about the differences between the 11 watt and 5.5 watt smart motors and how the 5.5 watt smart motor will be useful in Over Under.

Some of my top takeaways from this are:

  • The 5.5 watt motors weigh about 0.1 lbs less than the 11 watt motors
  • The 5.5 watt motors are only 1" thick so they actually fit inside a c-channel or u-channel so builds can be more compact
  • The stall torque for the 5.5 watt motor is 0.5 Nm, so it is best for low-load motion such as an intake, indexer, or a lift that uses gears. If you’ve looked at the EXP builds, then you know that you use two 5.5 motors in tandem where you would often use a single 11 watt motor. This article from the VEX Library shows how to build with EXP Motor Groups
  • Since you can use a max of 88 watts on the robot, you can use up to 8 11-watt motors or up to 16 5.5-watt motors. Basically that means you can trade a single 11-watt motor for 2 5.5-watt motors. That allows you to have more of those low-load motions, and you can save the 11-watt motors for high-load motions.

Matt also demonstrated how to use the these motors in tandem with pneumatics on the Striker Hero Bot. You can attach the triball intake to the chassis so that the pneumatics can push it out over the triball. Am I explaining that correctly?

Questions and Requests for @Matthew_Goodwin

  • Would two 5.5 motors working in tandem have a stall torque of 1.0 Nm?
  • Could you do an example build of a compound gear train with the 5.5 watt motors? Something like the V5 STEM Lab: Mechanical Advantage
  • I would love to see some VEX Library articles or example builds that incorporate pneumatics. We have a single acting and double acting cylinder. We can make them move with the help of this VEX Library article, but are still struggling to see how to connect them to the robot properly.

Does anyone have students who plan to use 5.5-watt smart motors in their competition bot next year?

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@Molly_Gomes this is amazing! Thank you so much for attending and sharing what you took away from the session! I’m excited for next month’s :smiley: if you’d like to see anything in particular in Matt’s next session, please let us know!