pic: 6 spoke wheel



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. :slight_smile: 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.