I was running my RC Tri-Track for around half an hour almost entirely non-stop. After a while, I began to notice that the right motor tends to stall for some reason. It seems to run fine going straight in either direction, but it stalls whenever only the right motor is running and seems to only do so at full speed. The motor stalls for only a split second and gets going again, and stalls every time I change its direction. The left motor, on the other hand is perfectly fine.
Something else to take note of is that whenever the right motor stalls, it sounds like it’s jammed or overloaded as if something is holding it back. I checked to see if there was anything lodged in the tracks to obstruct the motor’s sprocket wheel, but there was nothing.
Around the same time I first noticed the right motor stalling, I saw that the remote’s battery light dropped to 3/4. Even though the battery level was not low enough for the remote to stop working, I replaced all four batteries at home, but that didn’t solve the stalling problem.
I thought the wires must have come loose, but the all the connections were good. Another theory was that the receiver may have picked up some interference causing the motor to run a little jittery. I was at my uncle’s house at the time, and there were quite a few wireless appliances around, but when I got home and tested the robot again, the right motor still stalled. Taking into consideration the extended run time, I also thought the motor may have overheated causing it to stick, but once again it still stalled after letting it cool down for several hours. My last and worst-case theory is that a gear or two in the right motor may have broken, but I have no way of telling if it’s broken or not other than it not sounding damaged.
What else do I need to check? Do I need to replace the motor or any other electronics? Any and all answers/advice will be accepted.
The behavior of your right motor lets us think of two causes :
The bouncing of commutator brushes causing motor noise as the motor shaft rotates. You said that you connected a capacitor to reduce the noise, maybe try to change the capacitor or (for greater noise suppression) solder two ceramic capacitors of 0.1uF to your motor, one from each motor terminal to the motor case like in the picture.
Since there is nothing lodged between the tracks and the sprockets blocking the motor, the gear inside the motor might be damaged causing a stalling sound. You might consider to replace it robotshop.com/en/ghm-02-spur-gear-motor.html
I figured out what the problem was. I didn’t consider this at first, but rather than electronic or mechanical damage, the motor was just simply slipping.
I was disassembling the right track unit so I could remove the motor to check inside the gearbox for any broken gears when I noticed that the set screw on the mounting hub was not aligned over the flat side of the motor’s shaft. When I unscrewed the hub, I also saw some scrape marks that went completely around the shaft, concluding the motor was slipping. I then re-tightened the set screw and reassembled the track unit, and my robot runs normally again
When I was driving the robot around that day, I did change directions pretty vigorously at some points, which likely caused the motor’s shaft to come loose from the set screw and occasionally spin freely inside the hub.
