pic: Coaxial Swerve Drive Module with 2-speed Ball Drive and Nitrile Tread

[Bryce2471]

I really love this design overall. I've wanted to design a swerve with a single reduction ball-shifter for quite some time. I do have some questions and concerns though.

1. It looks like there is no thrust bearing above the vertical miter gear. This is not a big deal by its self, (We used thrust washers last year) but it will increase the speed of deterioration on the gears, and decrease efficiency in that gear-set. It also looks like you're planning on using the VEX Pro aluminum Miter gears. This is also not a big deal, lots of team use them, but I suspect the fact that they are aluminum will increase wear speed. With those two things combined, your drive performance may not suffer, but you will probably find yourselves replacing the miter gears pretty often. What is the process for replacing a miter gear? How long will it take?
2. How many man-hours will you spend to machine all the parts? How about to assemble the modules? I feel like you could have designed a module with the same performance, that would have been much less resource demanding to build.
3. What kind of bearing are you using to move the robot's weight from the red base plate to the top of the castor? In the cross section, it looks very thin.
4. Not sure if it is a problem or not, but I couldn't help but notice that your pneumatic cylinder is mounted to a plate, that has standoffs to a plate, that has standoffs to a plate, that is stood off from a plate, that has standoffs to a plate, that is mounted to your frame. Not sure why, but that makes me cringe a little.
5. What gears are you using on the ball-shifter shaft, and as the CIM pinions?