[Brandon Holley]

now now now...lets not jump ahead of ourselves here.

Akash,
By molding....what do you mean? Cory explained spot on the difficulty with injection molding. Money, time, actual injection...feasibility wise I would say close to impossible for a FIRST team, on any budget.

However, I've made wheels before by molding them myself. Silicone and urethane are 2 wonderful materials you can use. Making a silicone mold is fairly easy...getting them to fill properly is a lot more difficult, but not out of the realm of possibility for anyone with some kind of mechanical inclination.

I'd say for almost any wheel you make, your going to want to use a split mold. If you can gain access to a 3D printer of some sort I can tell you a VERY easy way to make a split mold (This is what I do all the time at work).

Once the mold is done, you should be able to get 10 or more wheels out of it as long as you take care of it properly.

You could go as far as to mold the hub, and then mold the rubber around the hub in a separate mold (yeah that's right, no nitrile). The nice thing about this is you can dial the durometer to exactly what you want.

If you have any more questions about this feel free to ask me and I'll gladly help you out.


One final note...keep in mind, if your making a wheel out of some sort of plastic, it is going to be lighter than an aluminum wheel (if you make the same exact shape), however it may not be as strong. Keep that in mind...you may need to balance some of your weight savings with material to your weight savings of mechanical design.

-Brando