Non-marking wheels
 

Our team recently built a Kiwi drive bot as an off season project with some old transmissions and omnis that we have lying around. It turned out great but there was one problem and that was that the wheels marked up the floor like crazy. Because of this we are limited to the places we can drive it. Our team is looking at the vex omni wheels and I am wondering if anyone knows if they mark floors. If you know of any other omni wheels from other sites that are non-marking that would be appreciated to. Thank you for your help.

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

AndyMark's DuraOmni wheels have TPU (ThermoPlastic Urethane, I believe) rubber as the roller material, same as the recent kit wheels except grey rather than white. Certainly much less marking than the ones with black plastic rollers!

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

Thermoplastic polyurethane*

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

What wheels are you using now, and what size? That might help us point you in the right direction.

(Full disclosure, I work at AndyMark that obviously sells omniwheels.)

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

Grey Colson wheels are non-marking.

Edit: Sorry, missed the part about them being omni wheels. I'm surprised to hear the great VEX omni wheels mark. I wouldn't have expected that. This is good information.

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

We've built some kiwis with Vex omnis. They did mark the floor. Basically they'd leave tracks whenever wheels were skidding. On one of the robots was built with 4" wheels and enough torque to spin the wheels from a dead stop so that one tended to leave a lot of marks. The other one was built with 6" wheels and didn't have enough torque to spin the wheels when stopped so it tended to leave fewer marks. These were our 2014 and 2013 competition robots.

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

While Colsons are non-marking, the OP was asking for non-marking omni wheels, and I don't think Colsons would perform very well as omni wheels except maybe on extremely slippery floors at low speeds (to avoid them warming up and getting gummy).

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

If you are looking for a good quality Omni-wheel that is non-marking you could try some of these:

http://www.rotacaster.com.au/shop/12...ble---r2/index

They are 125mm in diameter and you will need to either machine or 3D print your own hub depending on your application.

They are designed to be non-marking as they primarily used for handcarts and conveyors, they come in two different durometers 85 and 95A so don't have a huge amount of grip but should be very durable in your application.

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

Ringmaster from the last season of battlebots used wheels that appear similar to colsons in an unconventional kiwi setup. While it probably wouldn't work on carpet i'm assuming your marking problems are on a low friction surface like a gymnasium so it could work.

It's also safe to assume that ringmaster was using motors considerably more powerful than CIMS and that their side by side omni setup would result in more friction so you'll have to test it for yourself.

Ringmaster:
http://battlebots.com/robot/the-ringmaster/

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

You know what wheels don't mark up the floor? Wheels that can be cleaned up after using a mop/bucket, small towel + windex, or any other number of cleaner/wipes/etc.

You never know, the students on the team may bond over how quickly they can clean up the marks when school admin is walking down the hallway. What the school doesn't know won't hurt them ;)

Re: Non-marking wheels
 

Thank you everyone for your input and advice. The current ones we are using are rather old but I believe we got them from andymark and are 6" diameter. They do not sell them any more but they look like the image that I linked below. The only difference is that the rollers were a light brown color. The Durometer of the rollers seemed pretty low. Thanks again for everyone's help. We do not want to have to worry about marking up floors when driving around our school or if we are at a PR event