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We have used treads with the chain and cleats twice, in '99 and '01. The '99 system, while having very good traction, was not very efficient. The chain and cleats ran in Delrin guides on the bottom of the robot, and while Delrin is a fairly slippery material, there was a lot of power loss. Also, the parts of the frame supporting the idler sprockets were a bit flexible allowing the chains to roll off a few times. All in all, the system served us quite well in the traction-intensive '99 competition.
In 2001, we replaced the "slider" guides on the bottom of the machine with rolling idlers, greatly reducing power loss. Also, Andy's extruded aluminum frame is very stiff. We never had a chain roll off with this machine. A final new feature which allowed us to use relatively "high" gearing for a tread machine was that we used both a drill motor and a Fisher-Price motor for each side, giving us more horsepower than we had available in the past for our drive train.
Of course, as Joe mentioned, we still use the drill gear boxes which are not as efficient as custom made straight cut spur gears would be. We compromise on that in order to be able to have more time to work on the rest of the robot, and to allow us to build most of the robot in the club shop. To make our gear boxes would require significant "shop time" at one of our Delphi shops.
---Two days to kickoff---
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Team 45, TechnoKats, 1996-2002
Team 1062, The Storm, 2003
Team 233, "The Pink Team," 2004-present
The views I express here are mine, and mine alone, not those of my team, FIRST, or my previous teams.
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