pic: New Drive System for 703

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I've been sitting here looking at this picture, and I've been reading through the responses, and thinking hard. And I still can not find any reasonable explanation for the massive quantity of wheels. While Jak's post may not have been delightfully articulated, what he said is basically true. You're not really gaining anything here, except for a lot of un-necessary weight and more failure points.

If there is some big concept I'm missing here, please enlighten me.

I see a few potentially desirable attributes, depending on their strategy.

1) Spur gear drives have been proven to be quite effective in past FRC competitions, both in reliability, serviceability, and performance. (25's been doing it for years, although they choose ginormous wheels instead of 703's smaller wheels, which means they can get away with fewer intermediate gears and wheels.)
2) If they are choosing to climb other teams' ramps, there's functionally no way they'll be able to bottom out even on the steepest of ramps. Combined with those relatively short overhangs and the end patterns, I foresee them climbing anybody they want.
3) They've been drawing a lot of tread comparisons in their posts; if you want wheels to emulate treads, particularly on non-uniform terrain, this is probably the way to go.

Now, there's a possibility that it is entirely far too much weight and so on, but I'm willing to give 'em a shot.

(And besides, they could go "normal" 6WD if they wanted by dropping out a few wheels and bolting up some sprockets. I, for one, hope they don't have to do it, but flexibility wins.)