Our team broke a HTD5 9mm wide 320mm long belt at Silicon Valley Regional. We are trying to get spares, but due to the belt width change in the mk4 module we are having a tough time. Please lmk If you are a Bay Area team that has an extra belt, we are in need of one for the rest of the tournament!!
Get a 15mm belt and slice off 6mm. Not elegant but it can work in an emergency.
Yeah the MK4s use the 15mm version, but we couldn’t get any from any teams here.
If you can put a caster wheel there, in my head, you should be able to continue driving. However, you can’t turn while you do it. You should still be able to strafe.
@benjiboy2539 any ideas?
It’d be better if the component of the wheel that was “broken” was the driving - not the turning. Anything you can do without mutilating the swerve module to at least be able to change the wheel angle (maybe driving directly to the base pulley). Sacrificing actually driving the wheel is up to you, but to me it makes sense that you’d want to turn than drive more. However, simply switching the driving motor and turning motor in the code could be a nightmare, especially if you used WPI lib for swerve.
It seems pretty impractical for me to think you would be able to drive the pulleys by something like polybelt, if anyone has that on hand. Anything at least similar to that. I have only however seen it used on onboard game-piece manipulation though. No drivetrains…You would need to get it as tight as possible, cut it to size, and use a heat gun to “weld it” together. But it would be tough to get the clearance needed and actually have it properly deliver the power.
Sorry, I’m just trying to help - as I read this all of these seem far-fetched. If you have some back at your build site, your best bet would to be drive there (considering your TBA location is correct) and miss some early quals and practice field time. Hopefully you figure it out. Best of luck from PA.
@CharlieLambert assuming @Radiator72 suggestions are invalid, you can try operating with a caster wheel. Theoretically, your swerve could function (poorly) with only three modules. Strafing, moving, turning in place would all work, but there would certainly be a slight drift in terms of control. Don’t know about strafing and turning.
Again, your best bet would be to return to your buildsite and retrieve another belt. Unless… you don’t have any spares. In that case, I’d try to remove most hardware (preferably not the motor controllers because as long as they are there, your code shouldn’t change), grab a GOOD caster wheel (turns easily, slick wheels, etc), add some spacers, and toss it in. Now if you rely on a sensor reading from this module for some sort of function, you better get programming .
Best of luck!
We have the MK4 modules and ordered several extra belts (from Vbeltguys) after one of ours broke earlier in the season. They’ve been working great for us thus far so if you still need them, privately DM me and we can figure out a way to get them to you.
My reply offered much more barbaric solutions lol. This is probably the best way to go. Hopefully you two can work something out.
Turns out that the belts we have are 9 mm wide instead of 15 mm
I got word from 8033 earlier today that a solution was found
I mean that’s better than nothing, and certainly better than polycord or caster wheels.
Thanks for all the advice. We did end up getting a belt. Thanks so much to Jump Robotics team 8262 for saving the day!!! After about an hour of freaking out and trying to fit a 65t belt with bearings for tensioning on the standoffs we got back on the field for two solid matches.
We had broken the same belt on a different module on 2021 at Chezy Champs, but 2910 was there to save the day. We think it had to do with the fact we had been running it for a little over a year now and the rubber probably would degrade. For tomorrow Citrus and 254 have gotten us some spares, so thank you so much to them too!! For champs we ordered a bunch off Amazon.
For the caster method: I think we might by some versa Omni wheels so in the case we don’t have enough time to it can slide. It also gives me an excuse to do Omni swerve .
Once again thanks so much for the support!!
We were thinking about this. The question we got stuck on was mainly how do we take off the 6mm? I was thinking clamp it in vice and use a mill, but I think we ended up going more towards shears.
I’m not entirely sure how you would go about this process of cutting down 6mm of the belt. Personally, I would maybe try belt sanding it? We also sent a 320-5M-09 belt with the lead mentor of 8048 if that would work better for you. Best of luck at SVR!
Straight edge and utility knife.
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