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Originally Posted by Don Rotolo
Sweet! Very nice process.
What, if any, bearings are used on the shafts that hold the lab stoppers?
I'd also be interested in hearing more about the durability of the stoppers.
Don
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As of now the lab stops are on bolts. This was just for the picture
We are in the process of ordering a bunch of .250 ID 1" length bushings to put in all the rollers. They will then run on a ground steel shaft that is pressed into the wheel housing, with E-rings on the edges to keep the rollers from sliding off. We know that the wheels are slightly fragile with the rollers outside the wheel like that, and the steel roller shafts would be prone to bending. But like most robots, we plan to have our wheels well protected from all sides. The wheels can take huge forces radially, because if pushed hard enough the rollers will compress and the wheel bottoms out against the aluminum housing. This takes about 150-200 lbs per wheel to do.
A side note, efficiency is not reduced by weight on the wheel (other than more friction in the bushigns) because there is enough clearance on the sides of the rollers to allow for expansion due to weight compression. Also, these wheels get very good traction because the rollers are made of gum rubber. This means that all the rollers will have to be replaced every regional, but at 25 cents a piece from mcmaster, I dont think that will be a problem.
Our goal from this is basically to have an agile mecanum robot with lots of traction and pushing power, something not common with omni-directional robots. Look forward to designs for ball shifting transmission for each wheel...