Pneumatic Wheel Swerve

[gerthworm]

I helped with a pneumatic wheel swerve in college. We had a much higher weight limit and greater freedom in the choice of parts which helped a ton. Definitely possible, in general. However, the whole mechanism was still somewhat fragile - I'd be super worried this year about a module getting wedged in one of the defenses and burning out a motor. I wouldn't do it, but that's just me.

Edit: Here's some pictures of what we did: http://imgur.com/a/JkeBG

[dmorewood]

I actually ended up building a pneumatic swerve earlier in the fall. It worked but was heavy and really big. The wheels I ended up using were 8" diameter wheels from McMaster-Carr

[jkelleyrtp]

So we might not be doing swerve, but for my own edification I'd like to know the key areas of stress in a swerve module. I assume there will be a cantilever force through the central axle as well as loads into the chassis and into the retaining bearings.

There will also be a force acting down and away from the axle protruding into the module, creating a pivot point.

I plan to isolate vertical shaft displacement with retaining clips and maybe even shaft collars, but I really don't know the numerical loads it will face. What have I missed? How in Solidworks can I get a stress analysis based off of the loads?