bump-free mecanum wheels

[kamocat]

Originally Posted by compwiztobe

Which also happens to be a circle projected onto a 45 degree plane (or whatever angle your rollers are at). I just tried this in AutoCAD 2011. I made a 1/8 helix turn (circular arc projected up to the angle of the the helix) and revolved it around the endpoints of the arc. The important part here is that the line of revolution must be at the same angle of the roller. This puts the outermost part of the revolution at the profile line, so that the roller fits inside a cylinder (circular wheel) perfectly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from my observation it seemed to be working very nicely. Unfortunately, I do not currently have Solidworks (the platform I'm familiar with), so I can't make a complete wheel to verify just yet.

A helix? That's an interesting way to do it, and might work better than the linear slice I've been doing.
Seeing as the helix isn't on any one plane, how do you revolve it? I was under the impression the axis of revolution had to be on the same plane as the profile to be revolved.
Are you using a 3D drawing? (I've only worked with 2D drawings so far)