Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh Meyer
It looks like you are planning to move the traction wheel up and down with the mecanum wheel fixed. If you switch that and float the mecanum wheel you can use air pressure to create a suspension system and set the pressure to assure you have all four wheels in contact with the floor. This makes a much better driving mecanum if the floor is uneven. When one wheel goes off the ground driving goes bad.
Don't forget about the side thrust created by the mecanum wheels. You need some way to react against that force.
-Hugh
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Personally, I would keep the mecanum wheels fixed, you probably don't want a wheel that is constantly applying side load to be on the end of the module. Also, if you are primarily in mecanum mode, then you probably want that to be stable and not be affected by how much pressure you have.
To counter slide load from the mecanum wheel you can use a thrust bearing, but my team has found plastic spacers on the axel do fine (ex: vex spacers)
On another note, I see you decided to double up the colson wheels. Do you feel this is still considered octocanum, or is it dodecacanum? (since you have more than 8 wheels now) My team has been trying to decide since we do the same thing with our newest octocanum.