pic: 1323's 4x1 Wheel

[artdutra04]

It looks cool, but not very practical. The machine time looks like it would easily take over an hour per wheel due to the large number of small pockets and radii. If it's designed to use larger end mills to do the lightening, you can really fly through the machining. On similar (although smaller) 7075 hubs for our shooter I designed this past season, I wouldn't let myself use anything smaller than a 3/8" flat and a 1/4" ball end mill, and was able to machine each in only a few minutes. The three holes on the spokes are #10 clearance on 1-7/8 diameter in case we ever wanted to use AM sprockets (unlikely, as the timing belt works super well, and is very quiet).

Anyway, here's some pictures:

(pre broaching)

(on the robot)


As for your wheel, it would be orders of magnitude faster to lighten the wheel by using a large drill bit and changing the tiny triangular pockets around the outside of the wheel into ordinary holes. You don't need a billion triangular pockets to have a good looking robot. There is beauty in pure simplicity.