pic: Swerve! (Module)

[Madison]

Originally Posted by NoodleKnight

Nuttyman54 got it right, its a matter of distance rather than motor orientation.

The center-center distance on the sprockets is adjustable within the module -- particularly because you've thus far planned to use chain. I'm sure that you'd have very little difficulty finding a set of gearing that approximates your existing center-center distance and you'd save yourself a lot of headaches for doing so.

#35 chain does not require any more or less tension to operate properly. As mentioned previously, it's a bit more forgiving about alignment, but if you're already planning on using a set of miter gears in your drive, you ought to be able to align even #25 chain with sufficient precision to make it work.

You don't want to use chain in this application without an additional tensioning mechanism, however. Chain stretchs with time and use, so even if you've properly calculated the center-center distance to be a whole or half number of links, it won't stay that way for long. As the chain stretches, gravity is going to make sure that all of the slack ends up hanging off the bottom -- not engaging the sprocket and making the chain jump teeth. It won't be pretty.