pic: Another concept study

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Madison

My software-addled brain is having trouble visualizing how face-mounted cylinders can follow the arc the traction wheels make when extended downward.

It looks like they aren't facemounted, but rather front pivoting cylinders. The crossholes in what appear to be the mounts must be what they rotate on.

[Garret]

You may want to consider making the macanum's slower. 13 FPS will not give you a lot of torque on the wheels that is needed to make your roboto strafe. In 2011 we used CIMple boxes on our 6inch mecanum's and we were unable to strafe. I may be wrong because I am not a Mecanum master or anything, but this is just from my experience.

What ratio were you using? As Andrew suggested, That sounds more like a problem with the implementation than with the gearing. Our 2011 mecanum drive was around 8:1 and we had plenty of torque and speed to strafe. And besides gearing for torque on mecanum is like gearing for torque in Lunacy, you have just above no pushing power (in most cases) so gearing for high torque doesn't really do anything except slow you down and make you easy to defend against.

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

It looks like they aren't facemounted, but rather front pivoting cylinders. The crossholes in what appear to be the mounts must be what they rotate on.

You are correct - the cylinders pivot.

Last year we did use fixed cylinders with the traction wheels. The arc error was only about 0.010" so we made the holes oversized to accommodate it. With this concept the tractor wheel rotates too much for a fixed cylinder.