Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

We do make custom wheels and the weight on our custom ones are about .3 lbs. So I was trying to take advantage of these wheels and we have a ton of these. Machining out hubs won't take as long as making new wheels. Thanks Art for the idea and we will test it out on tuesday of next week.

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

That is true, these things look pretty sweet for their weight of only 0.05lbs....that's probably one of the lightest wheels to ever be used on a FIRST robot.

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

Are they really only .05 lbs? That seems rather unbelievable to me.

I don't think anyone else has said it, but as you describe them I don't believe they'll be legal. They were surplus wheels given away? Not a product they continue to sell and any team can buy?

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

Yeah, they really are .05 lbs. When our team found them in the scrap pile and asked him why these are being thrown away. He told us too many for this month. We are making some more in february. We put them on the scale and thatz what they read. Also the first thing we did with the wheel was to break it by throwing it, standing on it and doing random things but the wheel did not flex. I think the wheels are buyable if you contact the company. Afterall they use them for their wheel chairs.

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

I assume these are designed to be used as caster wheels on the front of wheelchairs, and as such, I imagine would easily last 8+ years with no issues used in that application. However, when you use them for a different purpose (powered wheels driving a robot) the dynamics change drastically and I cannot foresee them having the same life span. That is not to say that it won't work, but my limited experience with some of the higher strength-to-weight ratio materials leads me to believe that any wheel* that weighs .05lbs does not have the strength to make me comfortable enough to use them on a competition robot.

See if you can find out what the material really is, and that alone will tell you if they are truly stronger than aluminum (and exactly what sorts of loads they can handle). There is no sense taking someones word for it when there is enough information out there to double check for yourself.

Let us know what you find out. I am not aware of any plastic material that is less dense than any 6000 or 7000 series aluminum while also being stronger (or with remotely similar strength even).

It couldn't hurt to re-weigh it too and put something else on the scale of known weight to get a basis for comparison. When looking at the second picture, it definitely looks heavier than .05lbs.

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

Sorry - I do not believe they weigh .05 lbs - maybe someone made a mistake in where the decimal point belongs? Who told you or where did you read a spec that says it weighs that much - you should check your source again.

.05 lbs is less than 1 ounce. There are no materials known to us on earth that are that low in density that can hold 120 pounds in the configuration of that wheel.

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

Sorry guys, I don't know what to tell you. It is what the engineers told us at Sunrise Medical and it doesn't show up on either our bathroom scales or our scale at school. It measures every .25 lbs. So I guess itz under .25 lbs. :confused:

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

Yea please just find out what material it is. And if you can find a scale that measures even smaller increments that would be cool.

As for mounting the sprocket, I would go with Art's idea. U have the machining resources so get to it:p

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

If your custom wheel is .3 lbs and is set up for either a sprocket or live axle it will likely be lighter than or equal to the pictured wheel with a setup such as the one Art described to drive it. Combine this with the strength concerns mentioned by some of the posters and you may want to look at what you really gain before deciding to use this wheel.

Sponsor donations are nice, but the parts always need to be evaluated against the alternatives.

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

I was thinking the same, I was just wondering i there could be a lightweight solution to mounting a sprocket to this thing. If I have to make an aluminum hub it will probably be more than the custom one we have now. So i'm gonna try it out and see what i can do what this thing and i'll post up a pic with a sprocket, hub and the wheel all attached in a few days.

Preseason Madness Rocks!

-RC

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

You could always use them as idler wheels.

From what I've heard, the spokes at not meant to be torqued. Sure they may work fantastically as casters but until you can find a way to test how well the wheel takes torque, you can't trust them powered on a FRC bot.

-Vivek

Re: pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel
 

looks nice. but i agree with a lot of other people. in FRC i dont think it would survive. but off season stuff it would be great to work with. although for a wheel chair it may be great but think about when you put all of that torque on the center of that wheel. it would probable rip apart after a while.