[ehfeinberg]

To start, a little background of my team. My team has minimal resources and limited access to advanced machining techniques. Since our founding in 2000, we have had many really creative designs and strategies, but it has always been hard for us to execute them to their full potential.

Because of this, from the years 2007 to 2011, we used Mecanum wheels. The team has always loved Mecanum wheels because they are not too difficult to put together, and they have given us omni-directional motion. What I feel might be the downfall of Mecanum is not the drive system itself, but knowing when to use Mecanum. I've found that our team automatically defaulted to using Mecanum even if it wasn't right for the game. This year when we used a 6 wheel drop center, even though it is basically the Kit Bot, we had a very rough time and most of our problems were with the drive.

This off-season, we decided to challenge ourselves and build a swerve drive! To make it easier on our team, we decided to use the Revolution Swerve Modules. We also decided to use belts. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

That being said, these are my personal thoughts on your questions.

1) I prefer either AndyMark Performance wheels or Colstons. Although I have not used either wheel, my team did not have a very good experience with the AndyMark Plaction wheels. Colstons and Performance seem to hold up better and require less maintenance.

1a) If there were bumps like 2010, I would probably consider pneumatic wheels. My team used Mecanum wheels in 2010, and even though they worked OK, they didn't hold up to well.

1b) For a low budget team, I would either use the Kit-Wheels, or Colstons.

1c) I normally like 4 or 6 in wheels. We used 8 in wheels this year making it much more difficult to get the gearing that we wanted.

2) Since our existence we have been using 80-20 for the drive frame. If we found that we were going to be overweight, we would later switch 80-20 out to quick frame. This offseason we are experimenting with 2x1 1/8 in box.

3) We normally use whichever gearbox is in the KOP. This offseason we are testing out some Tough Box Minis.

3a) No, I haven't really seen the need for shifters. In the competitions we've played at I haven't seen Shifting give teams that much of an advantage. Until we get to the level of consistently making it to nationals, I don't feel that shifters alone will give us that much of an advantage.

4) Like I said, we used Mecanum from 2007 to 2011. 2012 we used 6 wheel, and 2009 we used something which we called backer-man(3wd with the back wheel a swerve module).

5) Too much. When we used Mecanum, we normally had a driving robot week 2. When we switched to 6 wheel last year, we got it done week 5.

6) In the past we have used Chain, just because we have always used Chain. However, this offseason with the KOP switching to belts, we decided to test out some belts.

6a) Belts are lighter and quieter. I'll tell you what we think of belts when we finish our off-season drive system.

7) We normally go long, but if the game requires it we will go wide. I prefer flop bots though.

I hope you find this information, regarding a team with less resources than the normal teams that post on CD, useful.