pic: Vex Mecanum Wheels

[Gabe]

Originally Posted by dbell

what material did you use for the wheels?

Three dimensional printers for rapid prototyping frequently use ABS plastic, which is likely the same for these wheels.

[Guy Davidson]

Would you mind posting the link to the original design? I might look into printing it as well.

[team222badbrad]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

That's awesome, how long did it take to print each roller?

I would also love to see some video of this in action, this could become a very cheap way to prototype a mecanum drive if someone started selling these.

Guessing from the size of the wheels I'm guessing between 15 to 25 hours to print all four wheels and rollers.

[thefro526]

Yeah the wheels are made of some kind of plastic. video is coming soon i am still recovering from monty madness. The wheels with all 72 rollers took >40 hours to print.

[vivek16]

^ooh you have 99 posts

[thefro526]

Sorry the videos took so long apparently the videos did loaded without my knowledge.

Heres the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmPbLRDwuGY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Oxt8Myjv4c

[tseres]

just curious: where did you do the 3d print? does ur school have one? or...ya...just about the printer./....

[thefro526]

I wish the printer belonged to me but sadly it doesn't. The Pre-Engineering program at my school has one and I asked it i could use it one day and since that is my shop and the robotics mentor is my teacher, he said ok.

[Ben Mitchell]

My college has one of the old plaster & binder zcorp 3d printers - it makes pretty models with great resolution, but they are not durable - they are basically things to look at, not play with. The machine used to make these uses plastic, so the end result is actually usable.

These wheels are absolutely awseome, and really show how Vex can be used with non-vex parts.

In addition, the side-stepping is darn cool. It blew my mind at Monty Madness.

[rachal]

Haha looks exactly like our drive but small and cute!

How's the wear on the rollers?

(Amazing job by the way)

[thefro526]

there is minimal wear on the rollers but they only have about 1 hour of use maybe 2 at the most. The rollers are made out of super hard plastic though.

[FingerTech]

Hey everyone, I'm trying to get the word out about FingerTech's new Mecanum Wheels. Now you can all have a set of your own!

Check out: http://www.fingertechrobotics.com/pr...ft-mecanum-set

Very nice work on printing your own though, looks great!