Gripping a Tote
 

Has anybody else run any trials on what kind of wheel or traction material grips the sides of a tote best? Specifically what grips them the best between a colson wheel, or a plaction wheel? if such a trial could be done or anybody could publish the data of a previously done trial, that would be great.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

We have found that the Habasit EPDM tread that AndyMark sells is by far the best. BaneBot wheels, wedgetop, and the grip material in the KOP are pretty good as well.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Thanks for the response to our question!:]

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Colson wheels are unbeatable.
We tried that green tread above, blue nitrile, assorted wedgetop, roughtop, pneumatic, higrip, banebots orange, and delrin (we have a lot of tread and wheels).
Of those, I would rank colson as waaaay above anything else, followed by banebots, trailed by pneumatics. Everything else was iffy. We didn't have great results with the green tread, but perhaps it's not the same stuff.

Polycord also gets pretty decent grip.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

This is really weird. We tried this exact tread today after hearing a lot of hype and got TERRIBLE results. As in it's one of the only wheel treads we tried that just straight up could not even intake a perfectly aligned box. Are we doing something wrong?

Blue Banebots are our current front runner. They even seem to work better than orange Banebots. Somehow we have yet to try Colsons...

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

My team is looking into possibly using some polycord in a roller claw of sorts. Any chance you can post or PM your data and possibly rig configuration?

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

We had fantastic results with these wheels. And at that price, we may be sporting them all around. ;)

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

We just ranked it by feel. Yes, it's not an amazing way to do it, but it's comparatively better than regular solid tread wheels, which Ri3D used for theirs. We're using the polycord in a roller, and we're testing it Thursday. I can get back to you then, but you might be better off buying some anyway.
It's useful stuff in many games.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Did you install it on a wheel? If so which one? Lack of surface contact might be the problem. The BB wheels may be working better for you because they have more rubber and can compress which increases the contact area. We are using the Green Grippy tread on a claw with about 4 inches of surface contact. In my experience, even a 3 inch long piece when laid on the tote, is extremely difficult to move side to side.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Green banebots wheels worked the best in our limited trials, however we have concern over how quickly they wear.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Blue BB wheels work very well for us--but they do wear quickly during prototyping. That should be less of an issue once we have limit switches, etc. in place to keep them from scrubbing so much.

Has anyone tried omnis? The ability to pull in totes and still elevate them vertically is appealing to me. (As opposed to elevate side to side this ain't willy wonka)

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

That's a neat omni design.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

My team has seen great results using the AM Stealth Wheels.

They grip on the totes extremely well from our experiences.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

did you mean mecanums? I know a bunch of teams used those to great effect last year.

People used mecanums for ball intake last year? Like an el toro a la mecanum?

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Not in this case, no. Omnis where the wheel is parallel to ground and the rollers perpendicular would allow for the wheel to pull the tote in, yet allow for the rollers on the wheel to let the tote be easily pulled upwards by some other mechanism.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

1619 and 1987 used them, and I remember a couple of El Toro intakes that used them.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

I was thinking about counteracting gravity using the mecanums, though I see now what you were thinking. That's a cool idea...

Is anyone else thinking four mecanums for intake that are then changed to pop the crate up?
Maybe this is the year we see a swerve drive utilize mecanum wheels... I'm down

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

MecaSwerve!!

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Well I mean, I believe the intake design is that like the one on Ri3D 1.0, where the intake is always on the ground, so that the tote can't down with gravity, but can be easily sucked upwards. I suppose the advantage is that you can have the intake closer to the robot, therefore have the center of gravity of the tote stack closer to the robot center.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Another way to achieve this result is to use a pneumatic cylinder to open and close your collector. This lets you use the grippiest wheels, provides some spring force for your collector, and still allows for a release.

We installed it on an AM Performance Wheel from 2010-2011. The tread was just a bit too big to fit inside the ridges of the wheel, so we just kind of put it on top. Our initial tests used rivets to secure the tread and we assumed the metal contact was the problem, so we switched to using a zip tie or two on the ends so that the vast majority of the green tread would contact the wheel. Same results.

We know the bins were only touching the top third of the wheel or so due to their V shaped profile, and I'm sure that's a big factor, but other wheels work better with the same limited surface contact.

Something else to consider that we're going to try today is using a mechanical slip clutch of sorts to prevent wheel wear. We're playing with using flat urethane belting for power transmission in our intake, which should slip when stalling but if properly tensioned will not.

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Good idea--methinks I'll have to steal it and present it to my team! :D

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

The totes aren't smooth, nor are they perfectly vertical on the sides - maybe some sort of spring-loaded horizontal suspension would make it work?

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

I am wondering if there is a particular Colson wheel you found to be the best one? We are in the midst of proto-typing our device and are doing pretty well with the traction wheels from the Kitbot, but want to investigate other options...

Re: Gripping a Tote
 

Did you try the white kit wheels as well? We found the white kit wheels worked better than our green BB wheels, which was very surprising to me. I'm wondering if our test set up wasn't fair to different types of wheels.