pic: 1625 swerve underbelly

[Aren_Hill]

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[Pelicano234]

Are those 2in tires? did you have any trouble wearing out the treads quickly and how many motors did you have turning them?

[Aren_Hill]

the tires are 1 3/4" wide and it was the nitrile conveyor belt tread from mcmaster car which is very durable. so now we had no problem with tread wearing out.
4 cims through dewalts are on the drivetrain and the motor that steers the wheels is a fischer price.

[ducttapedude]

I don't know much about swerve drive but from what I hear it's very very effective once perfected, How did you cooridnate the turning of the wheels? chain, programming?

[Aren_Hill]

all of the wheels are rotated by the same chain that chain is linked to an encoder but since i'm a mechanical person past that point idk.

[ducttapedude]

lol, true that, but with the chain, have you had any problems of excessive torque in a pushing match snap the chain?

[Aren_Hill]

there are 5 chains on the drivetrain. 1 for steering. and the other 4 to power the wheels. we have never broken a chain even in our extremely low gear. 1 time a masterlink came out because of excessive amounts of carpet wrapped around stuff. that and i think we threw the steering chain twice while getting sprockets lined up after that it never happened again.

in low gear we can spin the tires so i think were pretty far from breaking chain.

[ducttapedude]

awsome stuff, it seems like the the chain can really hold up to almost anything if the stress is taken correctly, machining precisely seems to be key so missalignment doesn't mess you up

I know of several years of using the small chain on things like our 3 stage tower and on our drive train, never really had any problems of the chain breaking except when extreme programming errors occur.

Also, so you guys decided that driving wheels through chain is preferable to just using striaght gears? (makes sense, and I don't disagree, just curious)

[Aren_Hill]

#25 chain and aluminum sprockets is definetely lighter than gears(unless you go 254's route)

[ducttapedude]

Yeah, you can cut out the gears, but only to a certain extent, just still got it in my mind that alot of nasty force would be put on these free standing modules.... but yeah, 254's method is very effective but a bit too pricy

[rachal]

Looks a lot like one of Wildstang's past swerves. How much does it weigh?

[Aren_Hill]

i think it weighed between 55-60 lbs i've already got ideas for next year to hopefully take it sub 50