Help out rookie/less experienced teams

[AdamHeard]

A few things I want to clear up;

There is nothing wrong with the kit wheels and there is no such thing as "too much traction". The kit wheels have even less traction than the IFI traction wheels that are recommended above.

High traction wheels can make turning difficult if the robot is not designed correctly. A 4 wheeled robot, with high traction wheels on all four corners, will not turn well... It probably won't even turn.


the best advice I can give to rookies on drive trains isn't to necessarily ditch the KOP chassis, but to go to a 6-wheel drive. The KOP frame is amazingly useful when you have limited resources.

A good thing for rookies with limited resources to do would be to design a 6 wheel drive (remember to lower the center wheel for turning, the KOP frame conveniently has this built in) that uses the KOP frame and an off the shelf gearbox (not banebots!). The easiest two would be the AndyMark single speed and the AndyMark 2-speed shifters.

A rookie team would get an amazing drivetrain with little advanced fabrication required, and would then be allowed to work on more ambitious things without worrying about a competitive drivetrain.

Also, unless you have the resources... don't get too ambitious with the drive train; If the drivetrain fails, it makes everything else useless as well.