pic: My Rendition of Emperor Swerve

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by steelerborn

I would have to disagree with Adam.

Using larger bearing for the steering in the wheels is not very complex.
Adam's math may be right and you may be able to get away with regular bearings just fine (973 used swerve this year and if they used them it probably is). But I would say that it is not complex at all to design a swerve using larger bearings. There are several ways to decrease the amount of components it takes in the design.

I would say the dynamic load of thrust bearings is a lot greater, than normal bearings, and I usually fall on the side of it is better safe than sorry, which is why I prefer the larger OD thrust bearings. McMaster-carr sells them for a good price, and even have some neutral file formats available for CAD purposes.

We are probably saying the same thing and you aren't realizing it. When I said small bearings, I meant not a large custom disk bearing. Our steering bearings were still relatively large compared to "standard" FRC bearings as we used a pair of 6805-2RS for radial load and a 1.375" Needle Thrust bearing off mcmaster for the axial load (5909K39). Using Metric bearings for radial was the key to keeping the sum weight of the bearings low and still inexpensive.

Our math is definitely correct (couple hundred hours of runtime in abusive conditions), with quite a bit of factor of safety as well. What we did is well on the safe side.