Modeled in Inventor 2010 Pro but rendered in Solidworks 2009. Had a free block during robotics today. 4" dia. 1" wide. It looks cool, but I didn’t design it to be practical and didn’t check the strength, I doubt the spokes are strong enough for competition. It was just to try out Inventor for the first time. Comments welcome.
Looks very nice! I have used inventor for over a year. I still can’t make a decent wheel.
I love the design… Maybe with some modifications you could make it competition ready?
Looks great! Couple suggestions I have:
What is the radius in the fillet between the spoke and rim? A lot of times machinists won’t like to go any smaller than a 3/8" tool when making something like this, so you might want to make sure that radius is about 0.2 or so.
Also, it looks strong enough, but it can can lose a lot of weight in the hub region. I’d remove a lot of that material between the bolt holes.
More important is the radius between the hub and the spokes. It’s tiny. I would just get rid of it. It’s not serving any purpose and it would be a nightmare for your machinist.
structural strength aside, that’s one of the neatest looking wheels i’ve seen.
Thanks guys for the suggestions and comments. I’ll be sure to fix the radii and the hub. Also, the spokes are a quarter inch thick.
Its a really cool looking design and I think with a couple changes such as removing a bunch of material around the hub and changing some of the radii, you can improve the strength while still preserving the visual appeal.