What do you use for wheels?

[Bill Gold]

Andrew,
I hope this helps a little.

In 2002 the belting material that we applied was cut by hand from part number 5994K854 in the McMaster-Carr catalog. We glued the tread to our aluminum wheels, and then used small screws to hold the edges in place. The belting never came off, and wore down a fair amount over 2 FIRST events and an off-season event. We probably should have changed the tread out for new pieces somewhere along the line.

In 2003 the belting material that we applied and used at Silicon Valley was cut by hand from part number 60155K113 in the McMaster-Carr catalog. We glued the tread to our aluminum wheels, and used a few small screws to hold the ends in place. During the regional we ditched the screws because although we didn’t think they’d make contact with the surface (they were pretty well recessed), we wanted to be within the rules as much as possible (regarding no metallic items touching the ground). We used zipties in place of screws to hold the edges of the belting in place. We changed tread Thursday and Friday nights before the pits closed at the competition (the grating on the ramp tore our tread up pretty well). It was a long process which would have been made a lot easier if we had built an extra set of wheels. Oh well.. that’s next year, I guess.

The belting material that we applied for Cal Games was cut by hand from part number 5994K854 in the McMaster-Carr catalog. We applied this tread with glue, and held the edges in place with zipties. This material was a lot more resilient in the face of the grating on the ramp, and not that much of a difference in CoF on the HDPE (it was a little less, but we didn’t drive like we were on ice). We had to change one tread (along with many other drivetrain problems that weren’t tread related), and we were forced to secure it with only zipties. We replaced old zipties with new ones after each match down the stretch. After about 12-15 matches in one day, the tread wasn’t as worn as the tread we used at Silicon Valley after only 4-6 matches.


Adam Y,
A parent on our team who works at Northrop-Grumman is going to look into getting us a sample wheel with neoprene casted around it as tread material. I’m really excited to see how that compares to the belting materials that so many FIRST teams currently use.