As the title suggests, I’m curious as to what teams are thinking about in terms of WHEEL choice, specifically in terms of getting over the steel boundaries in the Shield Generator. We’ve done some preliminary testing with past chassis, and we are getting extremely slow cycle times in terms of crossing the boundaries. We’ve ruled out Mecanums and Omnis, any thoughts?
Thinking about low robots, and pneumatic tires
my team has decided that we are going to build a tall bot and we are using 6 inch traction wheels.
We’re also thinking about pneumatic tires, but we’re concerned about the wheels sucking power, any thoughts?
We thought about that as well, but after running a series of tests, we’ve all but ruled out 6" traction wheels, unless you build some kind of 'skid" in front of wheels, the chassis is going to take a beating.
For Stronghold we used pneumatic tires and baha’d over everything with
no issue.
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we did some testing this year and the robot had little to no effort getting over the bar and when it came off we had few problems with the chassis hitting. you also have to remember that the bumpers would be taking most of the abuse, and not the chassis
I suppose, so you guys aren’t going to be running full speed at the boundaries? We don’t want to lose any cycle time, so we were trying to think of a way to maybe build in little skids in front of our wheels so we glided over the boundaries. We’re running into these things at full speed, not just trying to get over them.
We’re using 6 8" wheels with at least the back two being Omni and the rest Plaction
Are you guys just going to get over the boundaries at a slower pace? How do you plan on combating the angle at which you hit the steel boundaries?
We do plan on going over the boundaries. As for the angle question, that’s something I’ll have to talk to our driver about tomorrow; I wasn’t that involved in the drivebase decision.
Can someone point me to a doc that shows how much wider the am 14u4 is with 8in pneumatic wheels is than the standard KOP?
My team is going with a WCD with 8 6" wheels (4 omnis at the corners, 4 traction wheels in the center). We originally had no center drop on the 4 traction wheels, but we’ve decided to include one to aid with navigating over the 1" boundaries in the shield generator.
We tested perpendicular crossing with an am 14u4 from last year and it handled it fine at any speed although it did get rough. Will test at an angle tomorrow.
What is the advantage of omni wheels if you already have a drop? I’m expecting to see a lot of drivebases with shattered roller wheels this year.
I can’t find a document that shows the assembly, but I did find the parts list…the axle bolt used on the pneumatic version is 0.500" longer than the standard hi grip wheel bolt. So, my wild guess is you lose an inch between the two inner frame rails (assuming you keep the outer frame rails the same distance apart, so overall robot width is the same)
Our priority is to be a low robot that will go under the trench. We will try to avoid going through the shield generator. If for some reason we have to be a tall robot and go through the shield generator, we’ll have that center drop and then we might replace the omnis with traction wheels. Do you think center drop + omni wheels is a major issue?
i don’t believe that it will be a problem, but my team went with all traction just in case there is a decent amount of heavy defense in this years game.
So far 1557 is probably going to build a robot low enough to use the trench, but with pneumatic tires so that we can yeet through the shield generator while other teams are using the trenches.
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AndyMark has the drawings
Long enough you need the long version of the Toughbox shafts
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