pic: Omnitrack Summer Project?

[RogerR]

Originally Posted by Bill_Hancoc

I had an idea smiler to this a few weeks ago for a crab drive tank system. It involved 4 little individual triangular tread drives that could pivot on a dolly type system and then would be able to turn parallel to each other. The individual tread drives would be about 6-7 in long on the bottom and be based off a slightly modified 30-60-90 triangle. I wanted it to be fast along with really powerfull via a shifting gearbox but after calculating the speeds needed for a 1.5 in tread pully it would have been very hard to go fast since it would have reuired a really high rpm higher than the small CIM is i remember.

in 2001 used belts instead of wheels to help them climb the midfield barrier. after a bit of searching, i found a pic here (thanks 229).

based on my calculations, to travel at 15 ft/s with a 1.5" driving pulley, you'd need almost a 2.5:1 gear reduction, which could be done in a single stage.

i think the biggest problem to overcome with your design would be turning the modules themselves; 6-7 in of high friction material would create a pretty good resistive moment.

this design is obviously do-able, there's just a few problems to solve; but then, how much fun would all this be without any problems?