pic: Madtown Marauders Wheel

[R.C.]

Sorry, took a bit to write the description.

[Cory]

To be blunt, there is no way those spokes are not going to break.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Cory

To be blunt, there is no way those spokes are not going to break.

I'm wondering the exact same thing. Unless the picture is at an angle and we don't see the full spoke?

RC did tell me that Sunrise Medical told them the wheels were tested and tested again. They were concluded to be stronger than Al.

RC, did they say what plastic it is? Because although I would trust their engineers, I am a bit skeptical. Don't know if they'd be fit for an environment such as FRC fields and matches.

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by lilstogi11

I'm wondering the exact same thing. Unless the picture is at an angle and we don't see the full spoke?

RC did tell me that Sunrise Medical told them the wheels were tested and tested again. They were concluded to be stronger than Al.

RC, did they say what plastic it is?

Yeah, they did not say what plastic it is and they did say it is stronger than AL. These guys build quality stuff and their whole company is about quality. Cory, we have tried breaking these spokes and this wheel is pretty solid. We will test these wheels out before season starts. What i need right now are ideas about mounting the sprocket. Remember this wheel has to last 8 years on a wheel chair that holds a 120+ pound person.

[Chris Fultz]

You might be able to use AndyMark hubs and attach sprockets to them.

You can use the axle to align the hubs and wheel and keep things centered, and then possibly bolt through front to back (i think the hubs have six holes) and sandwich the wheel between two hubs or a hub and a plate.

[sdcantrell56]

You could maybe try pressing in a keyed hub of some kind possibly with jb-weld or some other strong epoxy as well. Unfortunately those wheels look really difficult to adapt to.

[Jim E]

how about gluing a plate to the outer wheel rim and bolting the sprocket to that?

[R.C.]

Here's a link to a better view:

http://www.team1323.com/Pages/wheel1.html

[artdutra04]

It's not hard to use a wheel like this, but get ready for some machining. The easiest way I can think of is to make two plates that sandwich the wheel with half of the spoke profile milled into them each, so they fit snuggly into the wheel. Then use bolts to clamp the two plates together, trapping the wheel and using milled grooves and the spoke pattern to transfer the torque.

Then to power the wheel, either drill a hole pattern into these two sandwiching plates for a dead axle drive train, or make one of the pieces out of aluminum (the other could be polycarbonate to name an example) and broach it for a live axle.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

[fist shaking/] argg... Dutra beats me to it... [/fist shaking]

Terrific their engineers might be, but I don't think my grandmother or her walker would last long in a FIRST match Although I dare say she’d try and make me proud

BTW, your link is broken RC.

[R.C.]

I fixed the link, it was being stupid!

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Hachiban VIII

[fist shaking/]Although I dare say she’d try and make me proud

Lol.

We might hold these off for non competition robots too btw. Doesn't have to be strictly for FRC either.

[Richard McClellan]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

It's not hard to use a wheel like this, but get ready for some machining. The easiest way I can think of is to make two plates that sandwich the wheel with half of the spoke profile milled into them each, so they fit snuggly into the wheel. Then use bolts to clamp the two plates together, trapping the wheel and using milled grooves and the spoke pattern to transfer the torque.

Then to power the wheel, either drill a hole pattern into these two sandwiching plates for a dead axle drive train, or make one of the pieces out of aluminum (the other could be polycarbonate to name an example) and broach it for a live axle.

If you're gonna go to all that trouble, you might just want to machine a whole custom wheel from aluminum.

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by Richard McClellan

If you're gonna go to all that trouble, you might just want to machine a whole custom wheel from aluminum.

We do make custom wheels and the weight on our custom ones are about .3 lbs. So I was trying to take advantage of these wheels and we have a ton of these. Machining out hubs won't take as long as making new wheels. Thanks Art for the idea and we will test it out on tuesday of next week.

[Richard McClellan]

Originally Posted by rc_cola1323

We do make custom wheels and the weight on our custom ones are about .3 lbs. So I was trying to take advantage of these wheels and we have a ton of these. Machining out hubs won't take as long as making new wheels. Thanks Art for the idea and we will test it out on tuesday of next week.

That is true, these things look pretty sweet for their weight of only 0.05lbs....that's probably one of the lightest wheels to ever be used on a FIRST robot.