[flameout]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

1) I think you will see significant wear on the rollers

Do you have any experience to back this up?

2) Dirt could get under the rollers, making them sticky and maybe increasing wear

Would this be an issue in terms of driving performance? Is this a problem that applies more to some mecanum styles than others?

To clarify, by "styles," I'm mainly referring to how the rollers are mounted -- I've seen rollers mounted on the ends (like AndyMark does with their wheels), and rollers that are mounted in the middle (like AirTrax uses).

3) We always put down carpet whenever we run on a surface that needs to be protected. We also put down carpet when we demo outside with our competition robots. (We keep an old roll we inherited at our shop.)

Unfortunately, this is not feasible for our team. However, now that I've looked at it, it appears as if AndyMark's rollers can be bought individually -- we'll do our own testing before purchasing whatever roller material we choose to use if we choose to do mecanum (so I'll remove this from the focus of this thread).

If you do you run mecanums, buy a set rather than trying to make them.

We need to be able to replace the rollers cheaply. Are you suggesting buying the initial set off-the-shelf and manufacturing our own replacement rollers, or do you know of a source for replacement rollers that we don't know about?

Thanks for the help.