[whytheheckme]

We used the AndyMark mecanum wheels last year.... with some problems.

The first set of wheels that we received, the tabs on each side of all the wheels weren't bent to the proper angle (or even evenly!)

We received new plates from AndyMark, that were bent properly (we still needed to do some minor adjustments, but it was much better.) The biggest problem after that was how freely the rollers spun. Some rollers on the same wheel would spin freely, while others were completely bound up.

This was just our experience though, because I know that The Enforcers (Farmington, CT) used mecanum wheels last year, with very very minimal problems (as I recall, they opened the box and assembled the wheels with no modifications.) They also somehow got away with going through all of their regionals using the original carrier plates in the BaneBots transmissions.... (lucky!)

So all in all, the mecanum can provide some good features that can't be seen in other drive trains, but the assembly is very heavy (4 motors and 4 gear boxes), and can require A LOT of fiddling with.

From the coding aspect (my specialty), it didn't take long to come up with code to drive the system. We actually have the BaneBots encoders installed on all four wheels from last years bot, which we implemented into a PID loop...... but the BaneBots encoders are constructed poorly, and after a few matches, the superglue (Yes, Superglue) thats holding the encoder wheel to the shaft starts to heat, and allows the wheel to move around, and eventually grind up against the encoder, rendering them useless. I would not recommend the BaneBots encoders.

Jacob