8 Wheel Chassis Design

[akoscielski3]

Originally Posted by thefro526

This.

The average Long Base 6WD has an effective wheel base of somewhere around 14"-16" depending on wheel size and chassis design. The last two drive trains I worked on (10WD and an 8WD) had effective wheel bases of 16.5" and 17.25" and neither had any major problems turning and both liked tracking straight at speed. If I were going to make an 8WD again, I think I'd space the center wheels ~14" apart from each other to have a good mixture of straight line stability and maneuverability. (Short center wheelbase 8WD's have a tendency to over rotate)

Sorry for the delayed responses.

Silver Stream 1.0 (I will have multiple version that I reiterate and they change to 2.0, 3.0...) has a center wheel base of 8in. I think in my next iteration I will change the wheel base. I have never made an 8WD Chassis before, so I wasn't exactly sure where thee center wheels would go for optimal performance. After looking at other 8WD (such as 2056's This year) I believe you are correct that the Center Wheel base should be larger. Though for the part about them over turning, could you not technically change that in the program? Although I think the better solution would be to fix it in CAD.

@jwfoss
My choice of the six inch wheels was mainly just cause I like them. They arent too small, or Giant like 8in. My team has no experience with smaller wheels, which I know isnt much of a change, but we are just comfortable using 6in or 8in. I personally don't like 8in though.

Regarding the supershifters...
We have used the gen I/II's for every year since 2007 except 2011. And we are simply sick of them. We though we would try something new, and we were looking at 234's Robot and liked the SuperShifter's they had.

You can find a lot of my Designs on FRC-Design.com
I love the idea of the site and I encourage anyone to visit the site to look for ideas from other teams, and to submit their own designs