Longevity of micromotors

Robotics and electronics discussion Mechanical design and actuators
1

hi

i’m building some differential drive robots using a number of your products (+ some other stuff for using lithium ion batteries). it’s all coming together well. thanks for a great range of products!

they are for an art exhibition where they will be running 8 hours a day for 4 weeks. i am wondering for how long can i expect the micromotors to last? (unfortunately i wont be around for the second two weeks)

i am using 50:1 micromotors (non HP)
i’m running them at 6V
the robots are mostly moving really slowly
(< 25% duty cycle)
and are never running above a 50% PWM duty cycle
they stall occaisionally (when they run into each other)
but never for more than 10 seconds at a time

i realise that this is quite speculative. i’ve had them for several days so far
(and obviously i’ll have a much better sense of this after the show)
can you give me a sense of how long they might last?

thanks

johnt

2

Hello.

We do not have good specs on these, and the life will depend on various details of your application. In general, I think you should be fine. We have the 30:1 version of those motors in our 3pi robots, some of which have been around for over 3 years now, and I have not heard of many failures. They don’t get the 8 hours of continuous use you have, but we run them at a higher voltage and at 100% duty cycle. I am most concerned about the stall situations, and it would be preferable to lower that time. However, if you are sure you are giving it 50% or less duty cycle even in the stall situations, you’ll probably be fine. Please share any results you have after your exhibit.

- Jan

3

i’ll post back when it’s all over
with documentation and how they lasted

thanks for your response