Tank Treads

[Pat Roche]

Originally Posted by DucktapeRaptor

Team 1097 has used treads since the forming of our team. Our origional treads were from a snowblower donated to us from Tahoe Sports and Motor. This year we used this website listed somewhere in the chiefdelphi discussion above: http://www.robotcombat.com/store_tanktreads.html They were basically modified forms of snowblower treads that you could buy seperately from the snowblower. We then machined some of the parts down for use on our bot. We ran out of time to machine the cogs, which would have been nice, since they were expensive. Just to give you an alternate option to Breco, which can be expensive. I think this entire year we were pushed once, maybe twice, and the treads have always been a major benefit for defensive strategies.

In the 2003 season we used similar treads, the craftsman snowblower treads they were good, cheaper than brecoflex but didnt quite have the traction the brecoflex did. Def. good for a newer team to use to make a good sturdy/powerful drivetrain and def. a gateway to designing track systems.



Side note: We didnt lower the idler(middle wheel). What we did was just use a larger wheel so it offset each of the two drive cogs sorta like this

O O O

Okay its upside down but you get the point.