Problem turning with AndyMark 6 wheel pneumatic drive

Our team is trying to use the AndyMark 6 wheel pneumatic drive chassis with 8” wheels, but is not turning well. Drop center wheel does not seem to be enough. Anyone else using this system and having issues turning?

We had this issue last year. We replaced the front wheels with omnis and that solved the problem completely. Another option would be to overinflate the middle tires.

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Having your middle tires at a higher pressure than the outside ones is the canonical solution to this problem. You could also look into slightly smaller tires for the hubs, but that’s almost more complicated than the + 2 omni method.

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Same as @ProPain37. we had this problem last year. This year we are also running omnis on one side and it has solved the problem.

In 2016 we covered our tires with silver tape, other teams at the competition were using tie wraps

Omnis or even just lower-traction wheels on one end. My team had this back in 2006 and swapped the front wheels for a Smoothgrip-type wheel (Skyway wheel actually). No more issues.

Have you tried using duct tape on the corner wheels?

We had the same problem in 2019; We slightly under-inflated plus duct-taped the front and back set, and slightly over-inflated the middle set. Our machine was right at the weight limit of 125 lbs. Getting the right combination of under and over-inflation so the 'bot didn’t rocker on the middle set took considerable finesse, as did smooth de/acceleration. We considered mecanum’s or omni’s for the front and back and then thought the the hard rollers detracted from the smooth ride on pneumatics. So… not sure what to do. It would be nice to have a thorough analysis done - which we have not.

What’s your chassis configuration?

I’ve never seen the 8” pneumatics work well on a long wheelbase. We’ve had success with them, but have never gone longer than a square wheelbase.

If it’s not too late, you could try shortening your chassis. Other than that, Omni wheels is probably the easiest way to fix it.

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