OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I bought an Amicus prime a few weeks ago and it reports ball jam error on the tablet but no ball is jammed starting yesterday. It happens when it runs at high speed, 66+ balls per minute. The worst part is that it starts throwing balls with constant side spin to the right when this happens and restarting the robot does not help. I also tried restarting the tablet and no luck. Any help would be appreciated thanks!

try changing mounting height of the head. it must be exactly on the line (any of 4 i assume)

Your symptoms are confusing to me. There are two similar error messages generated by the Amicus software. One will say ball jam and that is indicative a problem in the ball feed mechanism located in the base. The other will say ball stuck. That one indicates a problem with one of the motors of the head. Either error message will shut off ball feed.

My guess is that you are getting the ball stuck error rather than the ball jam one. And that error message is often caused by one of the top Ball Throw Motors going bad. If one of those top motors is going bad, it is probably spinning slower than it should or not spinning at all. Either way, it would cause sidespin to be added to the thrown balls. In 3-wheel Amicus robots, sidespin is generated by a difference in wheel speeds between the two top wheels. So if one is spinning slower than it should, you'll get sidespin.

In your case, if the ball is curving to your right, then it is most likely the top right motor (in your normal player position behind your endline) that is going bad.

To check wheel speeds, set Spin and Sidespin to 0 (no spin). At that setting, all wheels should be spinning at approximately the same speed. Closely observe the wheel speeds to see if one of those top wheels is spinning slower than the other. Reduce the Speed setting if it is not obvious which wheel is spinning slower. If you have an external power supply, you can test the amperage for each motor and anything much above 0.4 or 0.5A is indicative of the motor going bad (normal amperage is about 0.18A).

Once you find out which top motor is bad, replace that motor.

The other thing that could cause this is the wheel clearance is set incorrectly where one top wheel is mounted closer to the ball than the opposite top wheel. With your robot, you should have gotten a Wheel Adjustment Gauge (a short black plastic tube with 3 fins). Use that gauge to check the wheel clearance, and if necessary, adjust it using the larger hex wrench included in the Accessory Packet (instructions in your Owner's Manual).