pic: Off-Season Custom Wheel

[cbale2000]

Our team built custom wheels on our 2007 robot (which used 14 of them in the drive system). Personally, I don't recommend it due to the time it takes to manufacture and the weight of the resulting wheels in many cases.
These days it's easier to just buy some VexPro Traction wheels, they're more than durable enough and they weigh less too.

Now granted, this is based on what I know about my team. We've always had terrific manufacturing capabilities (a full machine shop at our disposal, with CNCs, Lathes, and more) but limited manufacturing manpower (we have more machines than we have people to run them). As a result, we try to prioritize making only the parts we absolutely have to, and use off the shelf products for everything else. If your team has the resources and manpower to build something like this and not have it slow down other parts of your build, go for it.

[Seth Mallory]

Most years we make wheels. We have a large team and all of the students have machine shop training provide by team members in the fall. The students take pride in what the team makes and it provides project management training in scheduling shop time. I just wish the Middle school still had the foundry that they had when I went there in 1970. We could pour aluminium wheels that could be machined in less time. As a seventh grader I would love doing it and it would help to inspire at a younger age.