[Solace]

Originally Posted by MBosompra

Thanks to everyone for answering my questions. I have a few more for you guys.

1) How much roughly did it cost your team to build the whole tread system?

2) Did you have to have the inner wheel machined? Did you have anything machined?
3) How many of the belts did you guys rip?
4) How would my team go about making a tank tread?
5) I'm worried about turning with the treads, I think that it'll be a lot harder with treads and that we'll probably trigger the breakers.
6) Is it at all possible to buy a premade system and then just install it on our robot?

the easiest way to make turning easier on a tracked robot (or any robot for that matter) is to lower the center idler wheel down about 50 thousandths of an inch. This decreases your effective track length while turning, and still allows you to keep most of your traction.

a slightly more complicated, yet more effective solution is to have a mechanism that lifts one end of your robot off of the groung using skids or casters. when you get yourself into a situation when you need your traction again, you just plop the full length of your treads back onto the ground.