Quote:
Originally Posted by ttldomination
I'm curious, are colson wheels really that much better than traction wheels?
I've been using traction wheels for the better part of a decade with zero complaints. Yet, the colson wheel is often praised as the superior wheel.
- Sunny G.
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Like many things in robotics, it's not necessarily what's better, but what's better for your team / situation / strategy.
In terms of purely static CoF on carpet, roughtop wins there. If you don't mind changing tread and want the most traction possible, go for it. It's worth noting that your effective CoF can change depending on what wheel you use - for example, try measuring the CoF of a Plaction wheel vs an AM Performance.
Colsons have some specific advantages. First, in terms of FRC they basically don't wear. Maybe with 200 matches and hours of practice, with small wheels, you might have to change them once. We've used the wheels for multiple years without having to change them. Secondly, the traction is pretty good across a variety of surfaces. While roughtop might be 1.2-1.3 CoF on carpet, Colsons are pretty close at 1.1-1.2. Off carpet, Colsons maintain their high traction while roughtop can suffer a bit. This was most evident on the key and bridge in 2012. Colsons also seem to get "stickier" throughout a match as they heat up, but this is hard to quantify.
Basically, Colsons are almost as good in pure carpet games without requiring maintenance of any kind. It's a team / driver preference thing, really.