[Rupnick]

From a team that has done mecanum the past two years, Mecanum is an amazing drive.

First off many people think mecanum drives get pushed around alot or have no pushing abilities at all. This is completely wrong, we have yet to have any problems of being pushed around. This year (many of times) we ended up PUSHING ROBOTS!

As for the balance thing, This year we decied to use chain and sprockets rather then running direct from the gearboxes as we did last year. This allowed us to move the 4 motors and gear boxes forward or backwards acording to needing changes in CG.

Finally I'd say if your going to use Mecanum wheels us the AndyMark 8" wheels. Though the 6" are "smoother" and "cheaper" and "lighter," they are weaker and more problematic. We used the 6" wheels this year and we had may problems. The way they where designed gives them pertruding edges that dig into the carpet. This caused us not to be able to turn in place. After purchesing another set of wheels and using 6 hours to remove and smooth off al the edges they worked great. When we got to our second regional and swaped out our old wheels for the new ones we realized that the hub area was now concave. The sheet metal is just too thin and the wheels way to problematick many of times we lost rollers this year, remidied by locktight.

Overall if you use the corect wheels and get the CG and code right your golden.