What COTS parts would you like to see?

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Max Boord

Can you provide an example where the rounded corners make thunderhex shaft inferrior to regular hex shaft? Also thunderhex bearings alone should be enough of a reason to use thunderhex over Regular hex.

We had a small issue this year. We were using the cheap-o plastic Vex hubs with thunderhex shafts in the front and back (6-wheel drive, center wheel had regular hex). We had 8" pneumatic wheels on a 16:1 ratio. We noticed the thunderhex shaft was rounding out the hubs. I think it was a combination of the plastic hubs, thunderhex, and high torque at the wheel axles. We took care of the problem by switching to the aluminum hubs and regular hex and saw no more problems. I couldn't tell you which one solved the problem, whether we would have had the same issues with regular hex with the plastic bores (possible) or the thunderhex with aluminum hubs (not likely).

The problem was not strictly with the thunderhex shaft, but in that particular application, using regular hex shaft would have possibly not worn out the plastic hubs (or at least would have delayed the problem).