DRIVE SYSTEM

[archiver]

Posted by Kevin Sevcik at 03/18/2001 2:50 PM EST


Other on team #57, Leopards, from BT Washington and the High School for Engineering Professions and Exxon, Kellog Brown & Root, Powell Electrical.


In Reply to: DRIVE SYSTEM
Posted by Rob DeCotiis on 03/18/2001 1:49 PM EST:



I seriously doubt you're going to find a concensus on what type of drive system to use. Well... Except for CD's nifty Swerve system, but I don't think most able able to build or handle that anyways.
From watching two regionals, I can tell you the types of systems that usually show up:
Timing belt treads on drills
2 wheels on drills
4 wheels on drills
4 wheels on drills and something else (rare)

That really just about covers it, unless you wanna get into details or start listing really odd and rare drive systems. Most of these use tank-style steering, though some of the wheeled designs use car steering, and one used a weird broken center kind of thing that you'd see on BIG bulldozers or earth movers. If you're looking for something simple to work out, I'd go with 2 or 4 wheels on drill motors. But if you're running on 2 wheels and you have to go uphill, make sure the casters are at the back. Have you ever tried pushing a dolly uphill with the casters in front? I saw some teams trying this and it didn't work very well....