[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Another consideration is tread wear. Brand new roughtop treads on small diameter, wide wheels really dig into the carpet, but after a couple of competitions, you will probably want to change your tread.

You can buy a selection of tread materials from McMaster-Carr if you do a search for "incline conveyor belting". I would recommend getting a few samples of various materials and you can trade off between traction on carpet, traction on any other field surfaces, and wear. Note that McMaster only sells this belting in 3" width (minimum), so you will need to use a vertical band saw (or similar) to cut them down to wheel size.

This is what we did in 2006 when we switched over to this type of wheel.

If you select and test your tread material properly you will find that there are roughtop materials that will not wear down on a standard carpet playing field all season. I'm not telling what it is, but there is a material that we have used for 6 years on our robots that even using them in continuous demos and driver training has never been replaced.