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Unread 13-08-2010, 15:10
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Re: Converting to Mechanum....

As others have said, you need independent drive of each wheel - in other words, 4 victors/jaguars, 4 motors, and 4 gear boxes, all connected to 4 wheels.

The KoP wheel standoffs are fine to use with Mecanum wheels. We used them on our practice bot with no problem (we did build our own for the "real" robot, it was a good experience, and gave us better mounting points for some additional things like ball guards). You can clearly see the Mecanum wheels mounted here, and if you look closely here, you can see a second toughbox in the background for the second wheel on that side.

The only reason Anymark has pictures up that show the Mecanums more in line with the frame is because that's been by far the most common configuration over the years - very few games, if any, have required such a large offset between the ground and frame. If you had wanted to use Mecanums in previous years, that's probably how you would have done it, since you wouldn't have been worried about a high bumper height requirement, the bumps in the field, etc.