AndyMark Plaction Wheels

[eugenebrooks]

We had the treads come off during light testing just prior to ship.
We riveted, but the treads came loose again.

We solved the problem with a method identical to how
we used to make good wheels from KOP wheels. We cut
the flanges off and then sanded the rims using a belt sander
right on the robot. We usually use a lathe for this, but we
did not want to take 8 wheels off the robot at this point.
We made our own treads using incline belting from McMaster,
by carefully sanding the first layer of nylon off the backing,
just exposing the black rubber layer. We then cut the treads
and glued them on the wheels with mid-cure crazy glue, using
no rivets or screws, after cleaning the tread and the rim with
MEK (or acetone if you don't have MEK handy).

No tread came loose at SVR. When we rip a tread off of one
of these wheels, it leaves the black rubber from the tread on
the wheel rim all the way around. Screws or rivets are not
needed at all when using this gluing procedure. In the rare
event that a tread does start to peel we use some glue on
it and it rarely starts to peel again.

Eugene