6 wheel drop center drive train

[MattC9]

Originally Posted by ns3517

Hey guys, we have a 6 pneumatic wheels drop center drive train but our robot shakes and jumps a lot when turning. I'm wondering how other teams prevented that from happening this year. I've heard teams wore down some of the front wheels or put duct tape over them to help prevent the amount of friction.

This happened to our 2012 robot, we ran 200mm AM pneumatic wheels with a 1/8" drop. The robot had a lot of trouble turning one of the reasons was the 1/8" drop. If you are able to do some re-manufacturing, I would suggest a 1/4" or a 3/16" drop if you think the 1/4" is too much. Pneumatic wheels compress more under weight than normal wheels do. That's one of their great features when going over rough surfaces.

Over inflate the middle wheels if you still are having some turning issues. Make sure you inflate all the wheels to their appropriate PSI. Under inflated wheels will produce more rolling resistance which will make turning harder. I wouldn’t recommend letting air out of the corner tires to try and make the diameter smaller, all this will do is create more rolling resistance on the corner wheels.