We are designing a roller intake to bring the totes into our robot. We have had success with BaneBot wheels but we are trying not to use them because they wear out so quickly. Who else is working on a concept similar to ours and what types of wheels have you found to work well?
Thanks!
Pneumatic wheels have great grip on totes
We have this sheet rubber we’re using on a few prototypes that grips totes extraordinarily well, however I fear you might have the same problem as you’re having with the BaneBots wheels in that it’ll wear out relatively quickly.
Surgical tubing also makes a decent grabbing material.
Wedge top seemed to work extremely well where rough top did not work at all…still trying to grasp that.
BaneBots 30A wheels work well with totes. The 3 7/8" diameter wheels overcome the bumps on the sides fairly well, too (relative to the 2 7/8" ones).
Has anyone heard anything regarding Banebots getting more wheels in stock? They are out of nearly everything. I have emailed them but have not received a response, and I called but only got an answering machine.
Does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives to these wheels? Mainly the large (4 7/8") 30-40A ones?
You might do well to try colsons, they seem to have good performance in prototyping and don’t wear out quickly. Also, they are way lighter and smaller than pneumatic wheels. Check this video out to see them in action.
The 4 7/8 ones were available in limited quantities last week. Sorry, I ordered whatever they had left to be used as spares.
They are really effective but wear out fast. We literally ran them until only the black plastic was left on the wheels.
We’ve found that the banebots wheels don’t wear out too fast if you spin them at a slower speed. There’s no need to have your intake speed be insanely fast this year.
I think there are a lot of wheels that work really, really well. We just went with Vex traction wheels and they work great… We played with some Banebots and Colson wheels but ultimately went with the Vex because they worked great and we were using a lot of Vex products already… And we had enough on hand. I actually liked the Colson and Banebots a little better, but there was very little performance difference overall.
we use pneumatic wheels and it works pretty well
From our testing, by far the Sure-Grip Drive Rollers from McMaster-Carr. We chose 1536T24
The Sure Grip rollers are great and from our 2 week testing period show little wear. They form nicely around the ridges on the sides of the totes. Only downside to them is the weight and price.
Team 1923 did fairly extensive testing with different wheels and speeds and we found that we really liked the banebots wheels, but as others have said we found that they wear down too fast and we saw that they were no longer in stock so we went with our next best alternative, 4" Colsons from VexPro. We also really liked how the 1/2" Hex hub mates with all of the hardware we had ordered earlier in the season.
You can see how we implemented them in our reveal video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yZNMJwGQEw
Do those wheels get dusty easily and loose traction?
You may have to wipe them off at some point, but we’ve been running ours for a couple weeks and haven’t noticed any loss of traction due to wear or dirt.