Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamHeard
Really?
There are many industries where machining a wheel from billet is *exactly* what they would do, hands down, everytime (it'd certainly be cheaper and faster than carbon fiber, which those same industries would also not hesitate to do).
For most mass production purposes, they might not be cost effective (really depends on the size, and the value to the user the wheels provide), but they easily could be.
Also, they're clearly cost effective for AndyMark, priced at a point verrrrry tempting for teams.
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Can you please be specific about what those "many industries" are?
And AndyMark, an excellent company, supplies wheels almost exclusively to FRC (as far as I know they are not an OEM supplier to any manufacturer), and at $26/whack the performance wheels are far from cheap. The Skyway wheels (injection molded I believe) are less than half the cost with integral tread. If you were picking wheels for anything other than a 1-off robot you would definitely pick the skyway wheels over the "performance" wheels because they would be much more cost-effective.
Machining from solid chunks of metal is very costly because there is a large amount of wasted material and a lot of time is spent removing that material. These are both bad for your bottom line, and bad for your carbon footprint.
How many machines made in the real world use wheels machine from machined billet? Cars (including race cars), bicycles, airplanes, roller blades, skateboards, office chairs, commerical robots (i.e. packbot) etc. all seem to use wheels not machined from solid chunks of billet. Sure, you
can buy car wheels machined from solid billet, but they're more expensive (by a factor of 2 or more) and heavier than forged wheels.
Machining wheels, or any part of reasonable size for that matter, from a solid material is typically found in 1-off, prototype, or development scenarios. I can't imagine these types of machines accounting for anything other than a very small fraction of any market.