My team is still trying to figure out wat are good cheap wheels that we can use on our robot. We already have andy Mark wheels but the tread wears Away way to fast for Us to be replacing. We also put wagon/pneumatic wheels on our off season project but they had to much traction for our robot to even try turning.so my question is what wheels has your team had success with?
You could get some conveyor belting from McMaster and use that as a covering for the AMs. That’s a trick that a lot of teams use.
330 uses AM wheels on the corners and 6" pneumatic casters in the center, running a 6WD “drop” configuration. The wheels are replaced regularly due to lots of use.
If you were having trouble turning, you might look into omni wheels.
or shorten the wheelbase
How strange…
1351 uses AndyMark kit wheels on a six-wheel rocker. We have never had any problems with the wheels except for their weight. Our wheels survived two regionals and one off-season event as well as being driven on concrete to show sponsors.
How much scuffing do your wheels endure?
Include Nationals and offseason presentations!
An alternative to omni wheels on one end and high traction wheels on the other end is to use the relatively hard black plastic wheels typical of caster wheels on one end and high traction wheels at the other end. We have found it to be a very good mix of providing some resistance to being pushed from the side but still providing a benefit of 4 wheel drive. This setup also allows good turning. The black plastic wheels do wear out and sometimes get chunks broken out of them so they typically last 1 - 2 regionals but are relatively cheap and depending on the drive train setup can be easy to replace.
One more thing - Colson wheels work well for the high traction end and they are affordable.
Colson wheels aren’t bad, but their traction isn’t the best either.
If you have access to a manual mill with a rotary table, put some 1/4 inch plate on there, mill it round, punch some holes, then weld it into the center of a 4inch ID aluminum pipe. Poof, High-Tech traction wheels for cheap! If you’re missing the Mill part, check out your local community college; many of them have shops and would love to help you out.
The colson wheels are great.
They actually have very good traction. Yes, conveyor belting has far more traction when it is new… but it doesn’t stay new for long 
Remember wedge-top was designed for handling food… I hope food isn’t as dirty as the FIRST carpets… You’ll need to keep replacing wedge-top or rough-top for it to stay fresh.
Colsons don’t have this problem. They are designed for dirty environments like shop floors. And when they heat up from friction, they actually gain more traction.
They also wear very well. One set will last you a whole season. And when you’re done, just throw the hole wheel away and get a new one! That’s how cheap they are!
^This.
1618 has done this very thing for two seasons–we cut off the tread from the AndyMark FIRST Wheels on our bandsaw, then rivet on incline conveyor belting from McMaster-Carr. The result has been rock solid; two robots, three events, no issues. (We did finally throw one tread during a demo early this year…from our 2007 robot, after the Palmetto Regional, Brunswick Eruption, and several demos.)
Tread costs a couple bucks, the wheels cost $10 each (plus bearings)–but getting the functionality of replaceable-tread wheels for half of the cost is well worth the afternoon of work.
Nitrile roughtop wears extremely well, and is a good compromise for this situation. I still prefer natural rubber or SBR tread, and just changing wheels often. It seems to be worth the traction advantage.
also the weight distribution over the wheels, could be a factor on the quickness of wear,
last years robot was two wheel drive with almost all the weight on the front two, we had great traction, but we couldent turn well, and the tread wore down to nothing after the FL. Regional!
Our team has been looking at Colsons. Last year we had 4-inch IFI wheels with wedge-top for low-weight and low center of gravity, but we also wanted to go fast, so our wheels ended up rotating at about a thousand RPM, and we had to replace a set of treads (that’s 6 treads for us) at lunch on practice day, and we’ve had to replace them again since then. The Colsons are a great solution, at about $5 a wheel, they’re MUCH cheaper than almost any other good robot wheel, and they offer a pretty good amount of traction if you get the Performa rubber type, and they also last a LONG time. Two other companies that offer similar wheels are NPC, which are made for battle bots, but are much more expensive and don’t have quite the life of Colsons, and Banebots, but their treads wear off like a Firestone tire. These wheels are used in the battle bots world more than almost any other wheel, and most of the people I’ve talked to love them. If you make a custom hub in the middle out of delrin or aluminum, you can put a key between it and the wheel, and then key it so it fits on a 1/2" or 5/8" shaft, to which you can connect a sprocket. Simple, fewer moving parts (bearings) than the IFI wheels, about the same weight, and very rugged.
That shaft still has to sit in bearings, so I wouldn’t say it is fewer moving parts or inherently more reliable.
We press-fit the colsons on the AM hubs and put three 10-32’s through the hub plate to secure them.
Works great and takes like only a couple minutes to assemble.
I agree with you here, for wedgetop. Blue Nitrile Roughtop is among the most durable tread materials I’ve used. Over the 2007 and 2008 season, using the robot for both competition and demos, we NEVER changed our tread on each bot. Never had a problem with roughtop wearing. Wedgetop, on the other hand…
Nitrile rocks. Never had a bad experience with it. Just lay it against an AM wheel that’s been stripped of the polyurethane, drill some holes and slap a few pop rivets in. It’s janky, but it WORKS.
Yeah, weight distribution is key. I’ve mostly used roughtop on our 6 wheels, and had no problems there. The closest we got to wearing tread out was on our 2005 Crab Drive, for Triple Play, and that wasn’t bad enough for the bot to be at a disadvantage.
Seriously, if you do your attaching right, you can’t go wrong with Blue Nitrile (assuming FIRST keeps the carpet…).
If FIRST doesn’t stay with it, go with red linatax.
Red Linatex technically has a higher coefficient of friction than Blue Nitrile Rughtop, on FRC carpet. So if a team has the money, go for Linatex every year. It wears insanely well, and is grippy like no other. Only problem is the cost… It’s MUCH cheaper to go with Blue Nitrile, at least from the suppliers I’ve found…
Craig, I was going for the icy floor! Lol.