Custom omni-wheels

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

According to McG, 2003 never happened lol. I'd love to see a pic of these wheels as well.

What was the roller material?

Were they designed before or after Andy Baker started publishing his designs?

Yeah 2003 was a regrettable year for MORT, but honestly the utter deflation from 2003 is what fueled such a successful 2004.

The rollers themselves were made from aluminum (as was everything else on the wheel). To create "tread", grooves were cut in each roller so we could put O-rings down the length. It ended up working quite well actually. Occasionally we would need to replace an O-ring or two, but it definitely simplified the design. If I were to build them now- I'd probably machine them from plastic, and create an overmold to put "tread" on each one.

I'm not sure if Andy had started publishing his designs or not. Either way, MORT was pretty secluded from the FIRST world at that time, and we developed them independently. The basis for the wheel design came from some that we had ordered from MSC. They were the little blue ones that you see around here from time to time. They were way too small to get up the hill that year because the material on the ramp was like 1/2" square mesh (the wheels would get stuck on each grate). This is why to continue using omnis, we had to make big ones.

I'll look on my old external hard drive tonight and see if I can dig them up. They are definitely worth a gander.

-Brando

[Jared Russell]

Depending on the application, Vex omni wheels may be a good option.