pic: Swerve Drive Can SolidWorks Concept

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by Dillon Carey

I thought about doing something similar to this, but decided not to because it seems like a lot of work on a lathe.One question, how do you get the HDPE plates into the grooves?

I can't answer for them, but I'm guessing they'll make 2 plates and have them each come in form the sides, that's what my team did.

The lathe time on these isn't actually that bad, it's the mill time that's killer. I would say over 90% of the machining that goes into these is in the cog belt pattern. It really requires a CNC though, because it has to be really accurate. You need four axies to make the cog pattern though, I'm not sure it's possible on a standard 3 axis mill. My team's may have taken longer because we didn't just make straight cut for the cog teeth, we had chamfers on tooth to create a crown to better grip and retain the belt, we found we had much better grip than a standard staight cut, I guess it isn't necessary though. It did add to the machine time significantly though.