Teams that used these this season did you run into any mechanical issues with the sds mk4i swerve modules? If so what were those issues and were you able to fix those issues/how did you fix those issues? We just purchased a set of modules to do some off season testing and would love to make any necessary mechanical fixes or additions before a failure rather than after.
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Although I believe a team using MK4 modules ended up running into failures with the bottom mounting plates, I personally haven’t heard of any similar issues with the MK4i’s. All of the SDS modules are very robust, and provided they are used as directed, should last you a couple of seasons. Just make sure to grease the gears well and regularly, and to perform tread swaps as needed, and you should be good to go. Also, cleaning tufts of carpet fuzz out from the bevel gears is probably a good practice too. I haven’t heard of or experienced any related issues, but the stuff definitely tends to collect after a substantial enough amount of drive practice.
I think 254 ended up adding standard metric bearings to the MK4i’s, using gap-filling loctite to secure them to the round bore in the center of the motor mounting patterns on the top plate, just to support the motor shaft. IIRC this didn’t really end up proving necessary though, and I haven’t heard about any failures regarding the motor pinions or shafts with the MK4i’s from any other teams either, so it’s probably not worth worrying about.
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The mk4 bottom plates 6061 while the mk4i plates are 7075 which makes them much harder to bend. We have majorly bent one mk4 plate this year and have minor bent another. I have yet to hear of a mk4i plate failure.
The flanges on the billet wheels can fail because they are too thin. It doesn’t really affect performance once the damage is removed and the burrs are filed off, but I can’t see the flanges surviving multiple competition seasons.
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Do you happen to know what caused the failure?
Run in with the cable protector? Fall from hangar?
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I do not know, we just observed them after a comp and we have both fallen from the hangar and crossed the cable protector many times.
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Which teams used Mk4i this year?
We used mk4 not mkfi this year and am don’t think we bent the bottom plate but we need an inspection to be sure. We also had an overengineered frame designed to protect the module rather than use it as a corner support.
The only issue we had was crud in the bearing causing one of the bearings to fail. We did not come up with a good solution for a guard to keep carpet crud out of the bearing though. If anyone has a good solution to that we would love to hear it.
As discussed elsewhere, the carpet has been fighting a losing battle against the robots. Sneak attacks on bearings are the carpet’s revenge.
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The most important not-obvious implementation item is to protect the motors from impact, wherever they are located!
I believe most of the “crud” was from the fuzz of the game pieces, at least this is what we saw in our tread and sprockets.
We used MK4i with zero issues.
We also used the WCP X corner flipped version with no issues on our defense practice bot. It’s just that the MK4i worked better for some packaging for us near the intake.
I would highly recommend either product.
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Ditto. Mk4i on comp and Flipped Corner SwerveX on alpha. Both great products.
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It was a combination of both carpet and gamepieces. The ball fuzz usually stuck to the treads while carpet fuzz made it deeper into the modules.
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What was the deciding factor for mk4i over swerveX, packaging?
We had the exact same damage to the wheel flanges. Between our 3 sets of wheels, we had 4 wheels damaged. We haven’t see any performance issues with it.
We believe its from the cable protector as we have fallen earlier in the season with no damage.
Around week 5 of competition we started to see it as our driver got more aggressive.
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