Can you put ducktape on wheels

Technical Technical Discussion
1

Hey everyone,

is it legal to put duck tape on the wheels to make them slip a bit??

thanks

team 772

2

I believe it is legal but why don’t you use the 2009 wheel that are low traction.

3

Legal? Yes.

Optimal? No. There’s a fairly high chance of the duct tape wearing quickly, or otherwise separating from the wheel.

You could try wrapping zip ties around the rim of the wheel; this will reduce the friction in the sideways direction, but maintain front and back traction.

4

Yes, but watch out for [G12]. If you damage the field (e.g. leaving smears of adhesive in the carpet) the head referee may have your robot disabled, and you’ll have to correct the problem.

5

The method that Eric Suggested has been used by teams as far back as I can remember and works reasonably well and can be undone/done in a pinch.

Another, slightly more permanent method is to attach a strip of plastic to the circumference of your wheels to make them low friction. Watch what you use to attach it though, any bolt heads/rivet heads/fasteners need to either be countersunk so that they don’t touch the carpet or be made from plastic if they do.

6

I would be careful with using zip-ties in your wheels to solve a turning problem… I only say this because of experience… Back in 2006, my old team’s (381) robot had 4 pneumatic grippy tires and turning was terrible. To compensate for this we used the zip-ties and it solved all of our problems at the NJ Regional. After that competition, we went to the Philadelphia Regional, and the inspectors deemed it illegal because they were afraid of “surface damage” to the carpet. I always wondered why this was, and when the same issue came up this year again with my current team (2180), we had to look at other methods. We’re using shrink wrap around our front wheels. While it might not have as much traction, turning is a breeze…

7

thanks everyone for your help :smiley:

8

I put the duct tape on the front and back wheels today. We are using pneumatic wheels so zip ties wasn’t an option of us and I really don’t wanna use them :wink:
Turning is wonderful now. So far the tape seems to stick on perfectly as the outside edges are never in contact with the floor because of the tires being rounded. We will see if anything goes wrong later :slight_smile: