Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

What a precious attitude, bless your heart.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

I highly suggest returning to the topic at hand before making yourself look worse.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

I forgot... what are we talking about again?

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

I think wheels.

Take a look at teams 2013's shooter wheels. They were really heavy and provided a lot of shooting power.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

At the beginning of the season, my team considered a half-track drivetrain that used a thick rubber-backed timing belt as the tread for the track portion. We printed off an early version of the wheel/pulley out of Ultem 9085 that interfaced with the KOP AndyMark sprockets. Just for testing, we threw it on a CIM and direct drove it to see how it was balanced and how it handled at high speeds, then we put it on a dead axle and hung 100 pounds from the pulley to see how it held. It looked good from those tests, but we soon decided we didn't want to print our wheels, especially since the teeth of the wheel would be taking a lot of shock loading when we went over defenses.

I would echo what several people have already mentioned and voice my own interest in making custom shooter wheels. The urethane casting sounds like a really amazing thing to do, because it seems practical and very educational. Also, for the purposes of involving other teachers, I think you have more opportunities to delve into multiple subjects more easily with some type of shooter wheel than just a drive wheel.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

I'm going to chime in here because I've watched this blow up without any explanation on why we are building wheels other than the intent to teach students the process of manufacturing.

This year we bought some wheels. (I won't say what wheels, they were plastic.) We used them during build season and they failed.

We are building our first WCD this offseason and are trying to keep it as cheap as possible. We found that aluminum wheels are very expensive, so we found that it would be cheaper to just buy aluminum blocks and make them ourselves (about a 50% savings).

Thank you to everyone who gave advice about making wheels. After a very successful year we are trying to venture out and try some new things. We've made the same drivetrain for over 10 years. It has worked well for us, but we see the advantages of WCD. Expect to see more posts from Clint asking questions about certain things, we need the help.

P.S. Part of our inspiration for doing this project was the released materials this offseason. We specifically looked at the CAD of 254 and 1678 on how to make a WCD. :)

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

I'm going to assume the wheels you bought weren't pneumatic wheels. Keep in mind that if that is the case and you replace them with aluminum non pneumatic wheels it wouldn't be surprising to see similar failures if used to play the 2016 game, given the impact forces robots see while crossing defenses.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

They were pneumatic. There was a thread about it. I didn't mention the brand/model because I didn't want to bring up the whole discussion again since it was a little controversial.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

In 2013 we ran an 8WD with custom aluminum wheels with blue nitrile wrapped around. The wheels were also hubless and had a tube shaft as part of the wheel. This allowed larger bearings to be run directly on the wheel.

Here's a link to an album with some pictures from it.

Imgur Album

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

There are many factors that contribute to wheel hub failure. I wouldn't write off all plastic wheels because you had failures with the AM Pneumatic wheel hubs.

The great thing about a WCD is that it's so easy to swap wheels. You mentioned in the last thread that you drove the pants off the wheels until they failed (which is an absolutely great way to test things). If you have the budget and the time, I'd finish your custom wheel + WCD project and grab a bunch of the various common FRC wheels (Colsons, AM Hi-Grips, VEX Traction, your custom wheels will probably end up being similar enough to AM Performance wheels) and drive the pants off of all of them.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

Did you use loctite?

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

We applied the Loctite after the hubs had failed. That was the controversial issue in that thread.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

Those are some baller wheels. What was the run time on those and what machine did you guys use?

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

The answer to "what was the run time" was too much. They definitely took some time. Sorry I don't have an exact answer, I want to say we got them week 3 but I'm just about guessing it was so long ago.

We actually outsourced the wheels; with all the other parts we had to machine in house we made the decision to ask a sponsor to help out with getting them made. From what I remember they were made with a CNC, not sure how many axis. Kevin might be able to answer that better here.

Re: Who makes their own wheels?
 

What is this device called, We need one.

http://imgur.com/a/trWYm