Mecanum Specifics- Layout, Ratios, etc

[EricH]

Originally Posted by craigboez

1. Does the layout of the wheels have a big impact on the overall performance of the bot? We could either lay them out in a square or rectangle - does it make a big difference (especially from a programming standpoint)?
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3. What have you used as a successful final gear ratio, and what type of gearbox did you implement. A few earlier posts suggested direct drive off a Banebots transmission, either 12:1 or 9:1. We don't have any of those, and rather than dropping $400 on some trannies we'll probably try to adapt the Toughboxes we've got. There are some good ideas floating around, just wanted to get a feel for what others have tried.

1. Layout doesn't seem to have a big impact. Main place might be in turning.

3. The team I worked with that used them in 2008 used something close to a 1:1 off of a Toughbox. I'm still not sure that was fast enough. I'm not sure what the ratio was off a 2005 KOP tranny (effectively a Toughbox, IIRC) when my team tried it in that year.

If you use a toughbox, I think there's a speed mod you can do pretty easily--you may want to do that.