[EricH]

Originally Posted by adra

Anyway, for our final project at university we will built a prototype forklift which is driven with mecanum drives. We have almost completed the lift mechanism and now we are focusing drive mechanism of our forklift. I should mention that we have 1 week left
Since we have no experience about this kind of drive systems, and we have some big problems that confuses us.

First of all, 4 wheels must be on the same plane. I mean even with a slight change of height of any wheel, driving will fail since all 4 mecanum wheels have to be operating related with each other. We can of course use a suspension system but that will cost time. So is it possible to mount the wheels directly to the chassis with same height?

If this were for a FIRST Robotics Competition robot, I would say, just make sure the frame can flex. The problem is, you don't want flex on a forklift frame. So you pretty much have no choice but some form of suspension.