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Unread 22-04-2012, 01:52
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Hawiian Cadder Hawiian Cadder is offline
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AKA: Isaak
FRC #0159 (Alpine Robotics)
Team Role: CAD
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: Fort Colins Colorado
Posts: 573
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Re: Andymark Plaction wheels vs IFI wheels

Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperNerd256 View Post
Really? That's pretty cool. Didn't know that. Thanks!



Depends on how you use them. The wider the wheel, the harder it is to turn. With blue nitrile you have a lot of grip on the carpet, meaning a lot of turning scrub when you try and turn. So unless you're really experienced with them, you may find trouble turning with blue nitrile and wider IFI wheels, compared to the thinner plaction/performance wheels.

I've never had experience with the 1" width IFI wheels, so I can't say anything about them, but I've had experience with both wider ones, and plactions.
During our season this year we found that a lot of a robots ability to push other robots actually comes from bumper placement. Because our robot was designed without the requirement of crossing the bump, our bumpers were lower than most other robots by about 1.5 inches. When we ran up against them our bumpers wedged slightly underneath theirs as well as pushed their robot up onto ours due to torque generated on the robot body along the axis parallel to the interacting bumpers and the floor, robbing them of grip in this way allowed us to easily push robots with similar traction characteristics to ours. I think that this might cause some miss-information about the effectiveness of smaller wheels, smaller wheels usually lead to lower bumpers which leads to better pushing power in matches.

TLDR: If two robots were exactly the same, but one had bumpers 1.5 inches lower, it would be able to push the other.