Looking for info on expandable shooter wheel

[Patrick Flynn]

I know 1923 was also running one of these wheels. Mike and Justin did an interview with then where they discuss the details of the wheel. It should be up on YouTube in the next couple of days or you could PM one of their members.

[scottandme]

The wheels are made by Fairlane (http://www.fairlaneproducts.com/default.asp). We bought ours from McMaster (3/4" bore, 4" diameter, 2" thick, 35A durometer nitrile). Fairlane's site is a little rough, they actually sell them in multiple materials, bores, and durometers - we were able to custom order 1/2" bore from McMaster, even though we ended up using the 3/4" bore model. It seems like Fairlane sells their products online through fixtureworks.net, they have a complete listing of the available options.

They do show wear, it just takes a long time. We've been running the same pair since week 2 of build season, and the bottom edge started to show wear at MAR CMP. Performance didn't seem to change too drastically - subjectively it looked like we had a bit more variation in shot height at World CMP, but I'll have to look at the video from early in the season to see if that's just my imagination. Either way, that was several thousand shots into the season (4 weeks of build season, 67 matches, unbagging time, etc), so they're certainly worlds better than the banebot wheels.

I know that 2016 used the 1" thick version and had to replace them regularly. As far as I know, they are the only other team that had them during build season.

Our team might put together a more detailed analysis of our shooter (amongst other things) later this year, but I can answer any general questions here.

[Peter Matteson]

Gus (228) and Aluminum Falcons (2168) used the expandable wheel. I'm sure they would be glad to share the info once they see this thread.

[James Tonthat]

We used them on our shooter, after whipping together a quick prototype. We were super impressed with their performance. Rebound time on the shot was a problem but the consistency was awesome. For us, they expanded to about 5.5" from a 4" wheel at 5100 rpms. We bought the 1" bore version and bought a 6061 aluminum tube from McMaster that was 1" OD and 1/2" ID, cleaned up the bore a bit, broached it, sanded some flats for the set screws to seat on and they were ready for use. They do eventually show wear though, I think we can put in about 800 shots or so before they start degrading.

Edit: Also thanks to Justin Foss from 2168 for helping us out with this. With the data he gave us, we were full court shooting on the first revision.

[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by Patrick Flynn

I know 1923 was also running one of these wheels. Mike and Justin did an interview with then where they discuss the details of the wheel. It should be up on YouTube in the next couple of days or you could PM one of their members.

Here's the link for anyone who's curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D5HSlBqaPg

[Chi Meson]

The link up there through McMaster's is correct. "Nitrile." Those are the wheels.

"Made of Marshmallow and Magic."

[fb39ca4]

What sort of material are they made from?

[aboppana]

We were getting more wear on the wheels than the other teams, especially on our back wheel. We replaced the back wheel at Lenape, and then the front wheel at MAR champs. At St. Louis, we were planning to replace the back wheel again as it was starting to show wear, but we had more important issues to attend to, and we left it running as is. The wheels has some small abrasions in it, which did not affect our shooting.
We ran these wheels for our second district event (Lenape) after talking to a few mentors on 2590 during Hatboro-Horsham. We were originally running two AndyMark pneumatic wheels, and they were OK, but our bucket jamming problems during Hatboro-Horsham made us very unreliable and left us in many matches where we couldn't even shoot.

After Hatboro-Horsham, we completely redesigned our shooter and ran the new expandable wheels. One difference we ran them with was we had much more compression (it seemed) than other teams. We had over 1" of compression when the wheel was fully expanded. We ran the 2" width wheels with the 3/4" bore. To interface them, we simply bought a 3/4" to 11/16" bushing, and then another 11/16" to 5/16" bushing, and press-fit the bushings into the bore of the wheel, and pressfit the wheel onto our mini-cims we were using to power it.

EDIT: We ran the nitrile ones, but they also come in neoprene and urethane.

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by fb39ca4

What sort of material are they made from?

You can buy them in nitrile, neoprene, and urethane but it seems like most teams were using the nitrile wheels.