pic: 2158 chain tensioners

[Richard McClellan]

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[roboticWanderor]

yea i hope that continuous drive train does not pop off! not quite shure how u tensioned that van door motor chain but w/e

[Browzilla]

Turnbuckles. Nice.

That looks like one awesome drivetrain.

[Richard McClellan]

The van door motor is tensioned with a turn buckle....that little bracket thing between the motor shaft and the big sprocket shaft. One of the eye loops has right hand threads, the other has left hand threads, so when you turn the buckle in the middle, it moves the eye holes further apart.

[Mike AA]

Make sure you bring more of the shafts you use for the drive tensioner. I could see it getting bend when one wheel gets more traction than another.

-Mike

[R.C.]

i recommend to going to mcmaster carr and typing in chain tensioner and picking the floating ring tensioner

[Uberbots]

hey um... on your power sprockets it doesn't look like you have nearly enough chain on them... isn't the recommended coverage 120 degs?
or are my eyes fooling me?

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by Uberbots

hey um... on your power sprockets it doesn't look like you have nearly enough chain on them... isn't the recommended coverage 120 degs?
or are my eyes fooling me?

looks like about 120 to me

[Richard McClellan]

Originally Posted by rc_cola1323

i recommend to going to mcmaster carr and typing in chain tensioner and picking the floating ring tensioner

I've tried mcmaster's spring roller chain tensioners before and they didn't work very well.....the polyethylene wore down pretty quickly after breaking in the drivetrain, so I'd be worried about having similar problems with the floating tensioners, though I know they've been successful for others before. Plus, our solution was a little bit cheaper than buying custom tensioners

Originally Posted by Uberbots

hey um... on your power sprockets it doesn't look like you have nearly enough chain on them... isn't the recommended coverage 120 degs?
or are my eyes fooling me?

That's probably the angle that the photo was taken. Our Solidworks model says we have 117º of chain wrap around each of the drive sprockets and we haven't had any chain slip since we put the drivetrain together, so we should be good.

[MrForbes]

Very clever and effective....

Also the idler/tensioner on the drive chain looks like it would want to bend over sidways easily, but since the sprocket is mounted on a bearing (or at least it is free to turn on the shaft), there is very little side load on it, so it can't bend the bolts.