Chief Delphi - Swerve Drive CAD

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Re: Swerve Drive CAD

We ran (are running) 4" HiGrips on our swerve this year. They've been great to us. The 'bot has well over 100 matches on it from 2 Districts, MAR Champs, Newton, Einstein, IRI and 3 off-seasons, and the 2-3 replacements each still make all the HiGrips cost less than the Plactions would. For us, switching the wheels is basically as easy as switching the treads would be. 3 more events left, and maybe one more switch (but probably not).

We ran Plactions for years and liked them as well, but between performance, cost and ease of use, HiGrips won out. (Ran Colsons for a bit too, but the prep time especially just wasn't worth it for us.) They do chip, but I can hardly blame them the way we drive our swerve. We did some (not-quite-official) friction tests tilt-tests last summer, and HiGrips beat Plactions on our carpet (also not-quite-official) basically until the stage at which we replace them. YMMV.

I'd give them a shot--preferably try Plactions too, but at $26/ea vs $6/ea, I know which I'd try first. See how they behave for you.

Re: Swerve Drive CAD

Actually, we've switched out the Hi-Grips only once this year. We may need to do it once more.

Re: Swerve Drive CAD

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clem1640 (Post 1294456)

Actually, we've switched out the Hi-Grips only once this year. We may need to do it once more.

However, we have 2 different sets of modules, so in terms of effective wear-to-switch, you'd be looking at 8+ wheels. (We do drive our practice 'bot, but not as much as we'd like.)

This actually gets sort of interesting when we're running a mix of newer and older wheels. We have no proof that this has any distinct effect, but there's some superstition around it with regards to pushing matches.