3d printed wheel
 

To put a little perspective into the choices made for this project some back story is needed. With the team I work with it is difficult to order parts quickly (can take 2 weeks for an order to be submitted to the company we wish to order from) as well as has to be an approved vendor (no McMaster Carr :( ). Thanks to this thread ( http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hlight=Banebot ) it gave me an idea to create and try a 3d printed wheel for use in different mechanisms but then a new issue arised what could be used for tread? So me and my friend scoured our local home depot looking for a good tread material and came up with using rubber tie down strap which had a surprising amount of grip and through our testing seemed to wear pretty well. The wheel it self held up very well and is alot stronger than I was expecting. The changes (we already knew we needed to do these things) it needs to be done only with a key or a hex shaft because a set screw method was not very effective. Also we would want to increase the number of shells for the print. Also it is to wide for the tread.

Re: 3d printed wheel
 

Clever idea! Maybe try a concave torus for the next model, that way the support does not protrude out at all.

edit: Saw Brian's post, I didn't even look at it initially. (He's my mentor)

Re: 3d printed wheel
 

Hi Matthew:
It might be interesting to test the performance of sideways and diagonal cuts in the tread, to see how that affects your traction and wear.

Dave

Re: 3d printed wheel
 

Definitely considering it I know some teams have do similar things to colsons with great results