Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
Mecanum drive puts added stresses on a belt because the wheels constantly change direction. It's not the acceleration or speed that's put on a belt that causes it to fatigue early -- usually it's repeated instantaneous direction changes. If you have robot-centric driving (i.e. the robot goes "forward" relative to its own direction) then the driver has direct control over how much stress it put on the belts. However, with field-centric driving (i.e. "forward" is always the same direction on the field, which is usually away from the driver's station) the computer calculates the vectors the wheels need and therefore the overall strategy and driving conditions control how much stress is put on the belts.
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Mechanums, from what I've seen, put less stress, not more, on a drive train because they tend to have far less CoF. Skid steer with high traction tires (~1.3 CoF) tends to have far higher shock loads than Mechanums with a CoF (in most directions) less than .8 (consider a 120 lb robot moving full forward and being changed to full reverse without slippage in the wheels).