pic: Team 166's Desperate Weight Saving Measures - 1

CD-Media: Photos
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#1

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Here you see our slightly modified AndyMark Mecanum wheels.

Basically, we had to lose weight for a vital part of our robot. Either we replace the wheels and lose the mecanum capability, or take a gamble with modifying the mecanum wheels themselves. We chose the latter and it turns out that these puppies work just as well now than they did before!

Each individual roller comes with three separate rubber rollers slipped onto a brass tube. We removed the two rollers on the sides from all twelve rollers on all four wheels.

So we saved a total of 2 pounds from all four wheels. We cut clear plastic tubing to make up for missing rubber rollers. 96 1/2" pieces weigh about 2.5 ounces.

#2

you could also lose a tiny bit from trimming off the 3/8" of bolt sticking out past the nut. about an hour with a dremel and you could save a couple of ounces from each wheel.

#3

or 5 minutes with a zip wheel :slight_smile:

might mess up the threads but times are desperate

#4

That’s the next step :rolleyes:

These are the wheels on our practice robot and we don’t really have to take the time cutting down those bolts. We just did this to the practice robot to make sure the wheels would still work properly.

We probably already cut down those bolts on our competition robot. I can’t remember.

#5

what kind of bolts are those? I believe switching to aluminum bolts would save some weight.

#6

It looks like the bolts are stainless steel. I personally wouldn’t use anything but stainless steel or steel on anything in the drive train just because of the beating their likely to take a beating. We had some aluminum bolts sitting around our shop a while back and I wouldn’t even use them on a vex robot.

#7