pic: Frog Force 503 Omnitank Drivetrain (rAC)

[Bryce Paputa]

In this revision, the drop was 1/8" and we ran into scrub issues. In the next revision, which I'll posting in a week or so, we increased this to 3/16" which should work pretty well. The omniwheels are off of the ground in traction mode. We haven't done enough testing to determine if much energy is lost in drag, but the idea is that when we are pushing or accelerating in omni mode, we rock on to the traction wheels and gain torque, but these traction wheels don't have enough traction to do this effectively, the next revision uses roughtop and will be able to test this better. We've been driving this for a while, and even with its issues it's a huge improvement over our past drivetrains. As for chain tension, we did exact c-c with no tensioners, and it's been very loose since we made it, however, we have not thrown any chains. We think that the looseness will be fixed by adding a bit (.018") to the c-c distance and fixing some spacing issues that left the sprockets a little loose on their axles. The shifting wheel moves in an arc that is always the same distance from the gearbox.