Chain driven vs Direct drive mechanum

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

1. If you don't know the exact drive ratio you want for the bot, it's harder to adjust speeds with direct drive.
2. You're locked in to putting your transmissions at the 4 corners of the robot. (This year that would have been bad - you would have really limited your space for the ball and your kicker.

Well, for issue one. I would recommend a AM SuperShifter. The shifters themselves offer lots of options when it comes to switching out gears and playing with different ratios.

As for the second issue, this is assuming you have a 4 WD. I've seen many teams place their direct drive gearboxes right smack dab in the middle of their 6WD, and they get stellar results.

The general preference in a 6WD is that one of the wheels is direct driven, and then the other wheels are either chained or belted together. Either way, you'll need 8 sprockets/pulleys total (if you go DD) and still a decent amount of chain/belting.

But, Direct Drives do require precision. Gearboxes must be properly integrated into the chassis in order to get the appropriate height off the ground/ample support for the output shafts.

- Sunny