[FTC]: rubber inserts on tank treads

[pbesen]

Does anyone know a good way to get the rubber inserts into the tank treads. I have tried dish soap without good results. Pulling them through with pliers wrecks the inserts.

thanks

[ethan_orion]

we used needle nosed pliers and pushed at the same time. a little bit of deformation but nothing that reduced the performance of the treads.

[PAR_WIG1350]

I'm not really speaking from experience, but have you tried slightly heating the tread and freezing the inserts, I've heard of this technique being used to install bearings in machinery.

[dcribbs]

Our team is thinking about using tank treads. The tank tread kit comes with 200 tank tread chain links, but the rubber inserts come in packs of 50. Do you need to have a rubber insert for every link or do you skip links? 4 packs of rubber inserts is almost as expensive as the original tank tread kit and was just wondering if you would still get good traction if you didn't have a 1 to 1 ratio.

Any feed-back would help.

Thanks!

[pbesen]

We used rubber treads on every other chain link. this seems to work fine although the robot vibrates a lot. I would guess every tread would be best but inserting the treads is very annoying.

BTW. We ended up heating the treads under a hot air source (popcorn maker). Once soft, they went in easier.