[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

In my opinion, and having used treads (Brecoflex specifically) on a number of robots, this is asking for trouble. In theory you can make cantilevered pulleys work, but you have to have some VERY ridged shafts. The problem with doing this on tread drive is that any sort of flex in the shafts or change in the relative position of the pulleys can drastically increase the friction of the system, which can, amongst other things, cause increased current draw on the motors. That 1/2" of deflection may not seem like a lot, but what's happening is the contours on the back side of the tread is grabbing unevenly on the pulleys, causing higher friction than normal; this will also, very likely reduce the lifespan of the shafts/bearings/pulleys in your drive. Additionally, having the pulleys cantilevered leaves you more vulnerable to having a tread to pop/break off your drive.

Now, that said, your current gear reduction may also be a factor here, when my team used to use tank treads, we would gear the system to run at, maybe, 10fps tops when using 4 CIMs. In 2006 we got away with a bit higher speeds by adding a pair of Mini Bike motors ("Big CIMs") to the drive, but even then you should almost never plan to be one of the faster robots on the field while running tank treads. Lowering the reduction on the gearbox/belts may help offset the efficiency loss enough to save some battery life.

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Actually what you said reinforces my theory on what is happening. I told some of the students last night that needle bearings might work better than ball bearings for the loads on the front and rear pulleys. We have a couple of backup options, one being to create an outer plate to take out the cantilever factor; the other being to run wheels instead of the treads. We will discuss our options today. Thanks for the advice, I wish we'd known then what we know now.

Along a similar thread as the above posts...


With a typical WCD, you are usually tensioning chains/belts, so there is tension in that system as well. However you're also usually doing that within the comfy confines of the 2 bearings (chain in tube) or on the inside of the tube (far away from the long cantilevers of the wheels).

My concern with the setup you're describing is that you NEED solid belt tension for the system to work, however that tension is wreaking havoc on your drive efficiency. By not being able to keep the ends of your shafts all parallel to each other (with an outer plate), you may be seeing a fair amount of deflection thats causing some binding.

The key symptom I zeroed in on from OPs description is that even running free on a bench you're seeing relatively significant voltage sag, to me indicating you're drawing a large amount of current, even in an unloaded state.

Have you tried running on a bench with less or almost no tension?

-Brando