Teams With Mecanum Wheels

[Veselin Kolev]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

His design doesn't called for holes to be milled at 45*. It calls for slots to be milled in a single plane that will allow an axle to be positioned at 45* with respect to that plane. Then, he welds that axle in place and cuts it flush with the plate. Put rollers over the axles and then do the same for the other side -- weld and cut flush. No multi-axis milling is required.

The downside to the design is simply that it won't ever come apart again, so you can't replace rollers should you need to.

M.Krass, you are almost 100% correct. The slots are in the plane, so the axles just slide in and rest on the plates. However, it is only welded on one of the sides. The weld just keeps the axle from sliding back and forth, since it can't go anywhere; it is tangent to the slots in the plates. Thus, you only need one side to be welded, while the other side can still come off. This allows you to replace the rollers when they wear out.

As for the machining question, it is actually quite easy to cut those plates, even with the 45 degree cut. Since there are 12 cuts equally spaced, all you have to do is tilt your mill head over and position it to cut one of the holes (this part is tricky and anoying) and then you just use a rotary indexer or rotary table to turn the plate 30 degrees at a time. Or if youre really cheap, if you notice, there are 12 bolt holes in the center of the wheel, you can use those holes to mount the plate to the mill. Ever time you want to move over 30 degress, unbolt from the table, rotate over one hole, bolt down again. This is actually how I cut the slots in the plates. I'm too lazy to make a CNC program that will do it all at once, I just unscrew, rotate, and cut the next slot, with about 12 seconds worth of G-code. And I cut four plates at a time, so it really wasnt that much effort.