Swerve Drive CAD

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

SDP/SI has a really, really obnoxious catalog, which is why I recommend using B&B Manufacturing instead, at least to find the part number. Most of the stuff is manufactured by Gates, so the part numbers are universal; you can hunt around for the supplier with the cheapest price once you've found your specific part.

The online or print catalog?

I find the sdp site far more usable than b&b.

[alextac98]

Honestly, we used those wheels last season for our robot. By the end of the season, we went through 2 wheels and the third was down to the rim. The tread material is really easy to chip and break. If you want a good wheel, just go with the self-treading wheels. Everything else looks good. Make sure you are ok with tolerences; our team forgot about that and we got some parts that we had to redrill. Good luck with the swerve drive!

[Siri]

We ran (are running) 4" HiGrips on our swerve this year. They've been great to us. The 'bot has well over 100 matches on it from 2 Districts, MAR Champs, Newton, Einstein, IRI and 3 off-seasons, and the 2-3 replacements each still make all the HiGrips cost less than the Plactions would. For us, switching the wheels is basically as easy as switching the treads would be. 3 more events left, and maybe one more switch (but probably not).

We ran Plactions for years and liked them as well, but between performance, cost and ease of use, HiGrips won out. (Ran Colsons for a bit too, but the prep time especially just wasn't worth it for us.) They do chip, but I can hardly blame them the way we drive our swerve. We did some (not-quite-official) friction tests tilt-tests last summer, and HiGrips beat Plactions on our carpet (also not-quite-official) basically until the stage at which we replace them. YMMV.

I'd give them a shot--preferably try Plactions too, but at $26/ea vs $6/ea, I know which I'd try first. See how they behave for you.

[Clem1640]

Actually, we've switched out the Hi-Grips only once this year. We may need to do it once more.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Clem1640

Actually, we've switched out the Hi-Grips only once this year. We may need to do it once more.

However, we have 2 different sets of modules, so in terms of effective wear-to-switch, you'd be looking at 8+ wheels. (We do drive our practice 'bot, but not as much as we'd like.)

This actually gets sort of interesting when we're running a mix of newer and older wheels. We have no proof that this has any distinct effect, but there's some superstition around it with regards to pushing matches.