Any Ideas?

[Cody Carey]

Hello all!

Ok, a couple years back, we had our sponsors test and formulate a special rubber for our wheels. As you can imagine, that was fairly expensive.
Because of the shape of our drive train, these wheels no longer work well, they are too soft and grip too well, we just bounce around when we try to turn. What we need is a harder rubber that grips less. Just to see if it would help, we put electrical tape on the wheels and our robot was able to turn correctly, but thats not legal. does anyone have any ideas short of getting new wheels or know of any commercial products that could harden the rubber?

[NoodleKnight]

In 2004 a bunch of people wrapped zipties around their wheels.

[Valkyries_698]

Try beveling the tires. We had the same problem 4 years ago and by beveling them, we fixed the problem of too much traction.

\_/ << like that. less S.A. of the tire touching the ground.

Skyway and similar companies provide a selection of wheels with varied durometer rubber treads. Our tires have, on recent robots, been in the mid-high double digits durometer-wise and have functioned well (keep in mind that we use tank drive. results would be different if you use skid-steer). Another resource would be AndyMark.biz and their omni-wheels. However, shipping was as of 5:00pm and the fix-it window has closed, so I'm not sure what options are left open to you. Hope this helped.

Michael Greenley

P.S. Spellchecker was picking up durometer, but didn't have any suggestions, so I apologize in advance if that's a mis-spelling.

[Cody Carey]

Thank you all. I think that the option that I'm seeming to like is the wrapping of the zip ties. I'll ask one of the mentors.

thanx to all

[Andrew Blair]

Originally Posted by Cody C

Hello all!

Ok, a couple years back, we had our sponsors test and formulate a special rubber for our wheels. As you can imagine, that was fairly expensive.
Because of the shape of our drive train, these wheels no longer work well, they are too soft and grip too well, we just bounce around when we try to turn. What we need is a harder rubber that grips less. Just to see if it would help, we put electrical tape on the wheels and our robot was able to turn correctly, but thats not legal. does anyone have any ideas short of getting new wheels or know of any commercial products that could harden the rubber?

Cody, you're currently ignorant of certain important facts concerning the development of our wheels. It didn't cost us anything to get the wheel research, because corry rubber donated the research! What would have cost us several thousand dollars was done for nothing because of our friendly sponsers. (Thank you Corry Rubber!)

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

It didn't cost us anything to get the wheel research, because corry rubber donated the research! What would have cost us several thousand dollars was done for nothing because of our friendly sponsors. (Thank you Corry Rubber!)

Yeah.. but it still did cost the company money, so.. yes.. it did cost money, but was an investment into your team on their part which was cool.

And you may want to eliminate that first sentence from your post (as I have), before you get flamed for using language like that on these forums.. Ya know. Just a thought.

[Cody Carey]

No, It didn't cost us money, but it did cost Corry Rubber money.
and as you know very well, your dad said that they probably wouldn't do it again.