Colson 101

[Adam Freeman]

How is the traction on the key and on the carpet with these wheel versus a standard AM performance wheel with rough top conveyor belting?

We have been having an issue of wheel slip on the key when we start to drive to the bridge, and I am wondering if these would provide better or worse traction and what the tradeoffs would be.

Thanks.

[jwfoss]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

How is the traction on the key and on the carpet with these wheel versus a standard AM performance wheel with rough top conveyor belting?

We have been having an issue of wheel slip on the key when we start to drive to the bridge, and I am wondering if these would provide better or worse traction and what the tradeoffs would be.

Thanks.

Adam,
In our experience the Colsons out perform the roughtop conveyor on smooth surfaces including the key and the bridge. On the carpet they seem to be fairly equal. I strongly suggest picking up some for testing.

[apalrd]

Adam,

We are using Colson wheels for our two center wheels (one is dropped, one is raised). We found that the traction on polycarbonate and HDPE is much better than Roughtop, and quickly decided to use them over IFI wheels for the dropped wheel.

[Josh Drake]

Has anyone tried a Colson on a swerve module?

[TD78]

Originally Posted by Josh Drake

Has anyone tried a Colson on a swerve module?

Team 40 used them the last few years in their modules.

[Josh Drake]

I would think there would be a wear and tear advantage over the treaded wheels with the side loads.

[Brandon Holley]

The awesome swerve drive done by 3928 this year utilizes Colsons.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=104504

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

How is the traction on the key and on the carpet with these wheel versus a standard AM performance wheel with rough top conveyor belting?

We have been having an issue of wheel slip on the key when we start to drive to the bridge, and I am wondering if these would provide better or worse traction and what the tradeoffs would be.

Thanks.

We too have found that the grip the Colons have on the PC and HDPE portions of the field (bridge and key) to be awesome. We have known about Colson's performance characteristics on these types of surfaces for several years, which is what made using them this year a no brainer.

Cutting grooves into the wheels also has shown an increase in traction, to the point where I believe our Colsons will "out grip" any standard roughtop/wedgetop wheel in the same width (1.5").

-Brando

So on a standard 27x54 flat carpet field, what advantages will Colsons give over regular treaded wheel?

[jwfoss]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

So on a standard 27x54 flat carpet field, what advantages will Colsons give over regular treaded wheel?

Everything is an engineering trade off in some way, wheel selection is no different. "Absolute Advantage" is subjective.

Pros that we've found for the Colson Performa wheels:
- Low Cost
- Never change tread
- Approximately match Roughtop on Carpet (un-grooved)
- Outperform on other surfaces (Plexi, HDPE, diamond plate)
- Some Shock Absorbing capability
- They "warm up" during a match (gearheads may find this interesting)
- COTS dead axle hubs available (this was previously the barrier to entry for most teams)

You can get CAD Models from the Colson Website. You may have to download the entire caster then save just the wheels, this is typically what we have done. I do have a model for the 4"x1.5" on my home computer if needed.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Josh Drake

Has anyone tried a Colson on a swerve module?

Team 228's 2010 Swerve Used 'Cut' Colsons, Team 148's 2008 swerve used Colsons, Along with 3928 (2012) and Team 40 (2011) as already mentioned.

Originally Posted by jwfoss

*snip*
- They "warm up" during a match (gearheads may find this interesting)
*snip*

In a simple pushing test in the pre-season (I sat on carpet, had the drive push against my feet for ~15 seconds) I found that the wheel temperature got to ~100-105* F depending on which drive wheel it was (30* increase from room temperature of ~70*). There was a noticeable improvement in performance immediately following this test, almost as if the drive had more 'bite' on the carpet.

[Jared Russell]

Is there a source for COTS live axle Colson hubs? Not that these are terrible difficult to make, just wondering.

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Is there a source for COTS live axle Colson hubs? Not that these are terrible difficult to make, just wondering.

No COTS source yet. I believe RC will be offering them in the future.

2415 has used colsons for the past 2 years as well. Last year we swapped to them after using custom treaded wheels and the increase in performance was noticeable. This year we strayed to pneumatic wheels to deal with the bump and were incredibly disappointed with the performance. We have just finished swapping to colsons for a weight savings of 2.5lbs and again the increase in performance is night and day. We will not be using any other wheels in the future.

[JakeD]

All my experience has been with the standard KOP wheels, as well as the andy mark Plaction wheels with both rough and wedge top. I've always found the wedge top to out preform on HDPE and other non carpeted materials but the rough top to maintain traction better on carpet. It seems to be relatively widely noticed that the Colson wheels out preform the rough top on HDPE and has similar performance on carpet but has anyone compared them to the wedge top?

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by JakeD

All my experience has been with the standard KOP wheels, as well as the andy mark Plaction wheels with both rough and wedge top. I've always found the wedge top to out preform on HDPE and other non carpeted materials but the rough top to maintain traction better on carpet. It seems to be relatively widely noticed that the Colson wheels out preform the rough top on HDPE and has similar performance on carpet but has anyone compared them to the wedge top?

Colsons stick much better than roughtop or wedgetop to anything other than carpet.