Has anybody else run any trials on what kind of wheel or traction material grips the sides of a tote best? Specifically what grips them the best between a colson wheel, or a plaction wheel? if such a trial could be done or anybody could publish the data of a previously done trial, that would be great.
We have found that the Habasit EPDM tread that AndyMark sells is by far the best. BaneBot wheels, wedgetop, and the grip material in the KOP are pretty good as well.
Thanks for the response to our question!:]
Colson wheels are unbeatable.
We tried that green tread above, blue nitrile, assorted wedgetop, roughtop, pneumatic, higrip, banebots orange, and delrin (we have a lot of tread and wheels).
Of those, I would rank colson as waaaay above anything else, followed by banebots, trailed by pneumatics. Everything else was iffy. We didn’t have great results with the green tread, but perhaps it’s not the same stuff.
Polycord also gets pretty decent grip.
This is really weird. We tried this exact tread today after hearing a lot of hype and got TERRIBLE results. As in it’s one of the only wheel treads we tried that just straight up could not even intake a perfectly aligned box. Are we doing something wrong?
Blue Banebots are our current front runner. They even seem to work better than orange Banebots. Somehow we have yet to try Colsons…
My team is looking into possibly using some polycord in a roller claw of sorts. Any chance you can post or PM your data and possibly rig configuration?
We had fantastic results with these wheels. And at that price, we may be sporting them all around. 
We just ranked it by feel. Yes, it’s not an amazing way to do it, but it’s comparatively better than regular solid tread wheels, which Ri3D used for theirs. We’re using the polycord in a roller, and we’re testing it Thursday. I can get back to you then, but you might be better off buying some anyway.
It’s useful stuff in many games.
Did you install it on a wheel? If so which one? Lack of surface contact might be the problem. The BB wheels may be working better for you because they have more rubber and can compress which increases the contact area. We are using the Green Grippy tread on a claw with about 4 inches of surface contact. In my experience, even a 3 inch long piece when laid on the tote, is extremely difficult to move side to side.
Green banebots wheels worked the best in our limited trials, however we have concern over how quickly they wear.
Blue BB wheels work very well for us–but they do wear quickly during prototyping. That should be less of an issue once we have limit switches, etc. in place to keep them from scrubbing so much.
Has anyone tried omnis? The ability to pull in totes and still elevate them vertically is appealing to me. (As opposed to elevate side to side this ain’t willy wonka)
That’s a neat omni design.
My team has seen great results using the AM Stealth Wheels.
They grip on the totes extremely well from our experiences.
did you mean mecanums? I know a bunch of teams used those to great effect last year.
People used mecanums for ball intake last year? Like an el toro a la mecanum?
Not in this case, no. Omnis where the wheel is parallel to ground and the rollers perpendicular would allow for the wheel to pull the tote in, yet allow for the rollers on the wheel to let the tote be easily pulled upwards by some other mechanism.
1619 and 1987 used them, and I remember a couple of El Toro intakes that used them.