Poll: Best roller claw wheels

[Andrew Lawrence]

Which do you think is better fitted for a roller claw in terms of grippyness and strength? The 3 wheels we are looking at are standard VEX wheels, Banebots wheels, and Polyurethane Rollerblade wheels.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

In 2007 Team 100 used the removable neoprene LEGO wheels for our grabber.

Except the roller blade wheels, which may be too slick, all of those options should work.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Team 2745 used the banebot wheels last season and liked the grip on the tubes.

[Marc S.]

The best claw wheels for 2011 application, are RC Rock Crawler wheels and tires. Some of them are specifically designed for sticking and forming to anything they touch. 973, 1323, 1625, and a few other teams used them with great success. At least from 973's manipulator, you would have to fully deflate and rip the tube to shreds to remove it.

[AustinSchuh]

The Banebots wheels worked pretty well for us. Nice rubber, very light, and already hex broached.

http://banebots.com/c/WHB-HS4-194

[Andrew Lawrence]

The best claw wheels for 2011 application, are RC Rock Crawler wheels and tires. Some of them are specifically designed for sticking and forming to anything they touch. 973, 1323, 1625, and a few other teams used them with great success. At least from 973's manipulator, you would have to fully deflate and rip the tube to shreds to remove it.

And where can these wheels be found?

[Marc S.]

And where can these wheels be found?

I believe these (http://prolineracing.com/competition/chisel-2.2-g8-rock-terrain-truck-tires-w/memory-foam/) are the tires 973, 1323, and 1625 used. The wheels (http://prolineracing.com/wheels/titus-2.2-black/black-bead-loc-front-or-rear-wheels-without-weights/) come with a 12mm hex already in them, but we put a .5" broach through them to fit easier on our claw.

[Andrew Lawrence]

Thanks!

[Chris is me]

The use of memory foam in those tires seems like a really cool concept. I wonder if I could make my own with some epoxy and Tool Dip for a coating.

[dodar]

What says that you need wheels to make the best roller claws?

[PAR_WIG1350]

What says that you need wheels to make the best roller claws?

Not this. (not the fastest, but definitely very durable, It still works to this day. It also has more than enough grip, but that was on a fabric covered ball, the tubes might not work quite as well)
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/30681

[Peter Matteson]

What says that you need wheels to make the best roller claws?

Ditto.

We've made many roller claws over the years starting back in 1998 and never used wheels. We've used knurled aluminum tubing on multiple occasions and Polyurethane cord or belt on others. I doubt we'd even look at using wheels.

[Brandon Holley]

We used a combination of the green banebots wheels, and urethane round belting (aka polycord) to create our roller claw.

Here's a video of it before we got everything mounted on the chassis: Team 125 Roller Claw Testing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKLypWFd-YE&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

-Brando

[Mike dennis]

180 spam used natural gum rubber "wheels" on our roller claw and if we touched a tube we could leave because it was just about guaranteed to come into our gripper and not go anywhere.