Re: pic: 4183 Custom Machined Wheel
 

188 has had a lot of experience and success with wood wheels on FRC drivetrains. Most were turned on a wood lathe, no CNC, DROs etc. They tended to be dead-axle with sprockets bolted directly to the wheel. I don't think they've ever needed to put flanges on the wheels to keep the tread in place, but I'm sure that will help. They do securely rivet or screw the tread on to the wheel. Special care is needed for the rivets at the end of the tread. It's hard to explain, but they put two rivets at the ends, but cut notches into the ends so that a half-width of the start of the tread sits beside a half-width of the end of the tread, and the ends "overlap" (not on top of each other, but beside each other). The two rivets go right beside each other, one into the start of the tread, one into the end, in the middle of the overlap. Very clean, and prevents any gaps in the tread - there's at least half-width at the gap.

Re: pic: 4183 Custom Machined Wheel
 

Version 2 of the wheel. Improvements include:

-Reduced machining time from ~30 min to ~15 min with better toolpath generation and faster feed rate
-Reduced weight to 38 g vs 71 g for the original wheel (some of the variation may be due to different materials)
-Smaller diameter match 4" Vex Pro Traction Wheels
-Recessed hub keeps hardware from protruding past the wheel.

We haven't yet been able to test them on a chassis.

Re: pic: 4183 Custom Machined Wheel
 

Very interesting! I'm curious how the hub goes on though; do you drill holes after putting it in for the screws or do you just glue it in and forgo screws altogether?

Re: pic: 4183 Custom Machined Wheel
 

I'm guessing they attach it with wood screws.