popdown casters

[phrozen solyd]

Originally Posted by Ben Lauer

Why do you need multiple castors? Just use one, and have a small cylinder pop it up and down. The cylinder could have less that an inch of travel, and therefore would be small, compact and lightweight. We were going to do this if our omni's fell though.

I am sure you can three wheel it for the turns. Plus, it should be down for long if you program it to pop down only when you turn past a certian angle.

I agree with Ben on this one. In 2001 and 2003 we used a single popdown caster on our robot on the cylinder with 1" of travel. In both robots, the caster transferred most of the weight away from the back wheels, but not all. It allowed us to turn easily, yet maintain stability.

[Team1425]

We are using a pop down caster this year, ours has half an inch of travel (we added an internal stop to a 2" stroke cylinder, since thats what we had to use)


We made it just enough to pull the weight off the tires on our back end and to help from oversteer caused by the caster we plan on dragging the tires just slightly (this also helps our stability with one caster, although we have a really low center of gravity as it is)