Due to the lack of availability of the AM Pneumatic wheels we are thinking about turning to Skyway for substitutes.
Does anyone have experience using any of their wheels with the AM14U3?
Ordering options located here
I am not sure about their Beadlock tires does anyone have experience with these?
Any tips for mounting their tires? What other parts would I need in addition to the parts listed on the upgrade kit?
First off, call them and tell them you’re with a FIRST team. There’s a discount.
Second, from what I remember of the Beadlok tires, they’re not pneumatic, they’re solid rubber. I think it was also rather harder and less grippy than you’d really like for an FRC application.
Its really sad that there is a shortage of pneumatic wheels. No fault to the supplier. To have to go with a less than optimal alternative, if that ends up being the case with robot testing…oh boy.
What do you want to know about the SkyWay wheels? We use an all gear drive for them but it could easily be done with chains.
The shortage is extreme too. We got the upgrade kit and I feel like we won the lotto. The only reason we got it was because our mentor ordered it an hour after it was released. By the next day we would have had to wait until week 3.
It’s a crazy world out there.
We see this often enough that I’m beginning to lose patience with it, to be frank. FRC suppliers have a captive market and very little competition. I’m thankful for the service they provide (no, I’m not eager to go back to the Small Parts Inc. dark ages), but I can’t believe that there’s no way this could be improved.
Oh it could totally be improved. I mean take this year for example. If Andymark would have just kept, oh, $250,000 or more of stock in pneumatic wheels that maybe 15% of teams were using previously, then we wouldn’t be in this situation. Oh. And also $250K stock in 4" wheels for the flat unobstructed field game this year. And $250K of mecanum wheels for the unexpected return this year of no defense, high maneuverability. And, and, and. And if only they would oblige us all by either knowing exactly what the game will be and what teams will want and keeping at least 10000 of everything in stock in case the FRC world decides that whirly-ma-whatsits are this year’s must-have-to-win item. Yeah, that sounds totally reasonable.
I think what Oblarg is getting at is that because AndyMark has been in the loop about game elements before Kickoff in the past, FIRST could identify potential supply issues and notify AndyMark, and maybe even others select retailers, in advance. There are quite a few difficulties with that, but it is an option.
Speaking for only myself not anyone else…
It’s not actually that hard to fabricate wheel hubs.
I could understand the issue if a team was in dire need of basic shop tools.
I could understand the time might be more valuable if you could buy them.
Well you can’t buy them fast enough - so why not try to make them?
Is it really more practical to gripe about it?
What’s the worst that happens you fail to do it right, or would you rather, risk not getting it done?
I am actually way more surprised that someone hasn’t risen to the challenge and started posting examples of making wheel hubs.
I suppose some people want to weed out their competitors like this.
Unless I’m very much mistaken, AndyMark know what the game is long before kickoff. After all, they have to stock game-specific hardware.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that with knowledge of the game, the demand for the pneumatic wheels and for the treads could have been predicted.
Running out of stock is one thing. Running out of stock on the first weekend of build season every single year is something else.
If you think it is actually impossible to do better than this, then I’m very much open to hearing why. You don’t have to be snarky about it, just make your point.
As far as I recall from interviews with Andy - they do not have that much time. (Memory could be fuzzy though).
Ahem, Back to the original question…
I don’t have experience mounting skyway wheels to a AM14U3 but we have mounted the wheels to sprockets in the past. Its a pretty easy, all it requires is a spacer and some bolts. I’m sure something similar can be done with the pulleys for the AM14U3 chassis.
A couple of questions:
I know you guys like to turn them down and cut your own pattern into them. How do you do this and how does this affect the performance of the wheels?
How does the traction of these wheels stand up to the rubber of typical pneumatic wheels on carpet and lexan? I know they have urethane tread, but that comes in a variety of hardnesses and these seem to be on the hard, low CoF side.
I’m wondering if it’s worth pursuing using these in the rear for their traction advantage in conjunction with pneumatic tires for absorbing impacts in the front. Thoughts?
I think I’ve heard the same from him and others at AndyMark.
Not to mention that there is probably a significant lead time on the initial orders they make to the manufacturer(s). Sure tons are probably made by said company every day, but those same tons are already sold to existing customers… hence why the manufacturer(s) probably can’t just flip a switch and instantly have the additional output (i.e. supply) to meet AndyMark’s needs (i.e. demand).
Industrial parts I understand are like that; the demand is usually somewhat inelastic (similar to why diesel prices don’t fluctuate as much as gasoline) so the ability to change production quota reflects that; a sudden large demand isn’t usually seen as likely enough to invest the additional resources to allow for it. Thus, since these wheels are (presumably) sourced by a wheel company or two, they’re happy to sell AndyMark the components but the amount (either gross number of components or a given production rate) takes some time even if it’s a part already in production.
Other food for thought: I remember in 2014 during Lunch With Andy that he always mentioned shipments coming in for the balls from Sportigo in a similar fashion to the shipments for pneumatic wheels/rhino plates/treads (only w/o the crazy shortages) which also seems to suggest AndyMark isn’t given as much advance warning as many seem to think.
If we press in a modified AM Hub, do you think there is enough material in the area of the screwholes to tap or drill through to bolt on the AM sprockets?
Pls excuse rough ‘CAD’, it was scaled off Skyway Drawing. I don’t suppose anyone has a better cad file?
This is more of the type of information I was after!
What type of their wheels do you guys use, the pneumatic I assume? The 10 and the 12 seem too big. Any experience or preference between the 8x2 Diamond vs the 8x1.25 Ribbed?
What do you think would be easiest to integrate with the AM14U3?
There are other sources for pneumatic wheels.
for one
http://www.wheelchairparts.net/power-chairs/
Yes you may have to do some modifying but there are alternatives. Teams that have used Colson wheels in the past had to modify them.
Andymark does a great job in my opinion!
There have been a couple “just modify some other wheels” posts in this thread and others and I would love to get a little more information about how one would go about doing that. The comments seem to be directed at all teams rather than “higher resources” teams, so we’ll try to figure out what an average team that is using the KOP chassis would need to do.
Assumptions: This is an average team with tool resources such as drill presses, band saws, chop saws, cold saws, etc. No shop resources such as lathes, mills, CNC, etc. As this thread is asking about using the KOP chassis, we will need to fit these wheels to that chassis.
Let’s take those wheels you, DonShaw, posted as an example. Most have a 5/16" bearing in the center. The Kit chassis has a 3/8" hole for front and rear axles. Ideally the 5/16" bearing can be swapped for a 3/8" bearing, but there is no bore size listed on that site. If the bore size is 0.865" I assume the team would have a problem with fit for the bearing? Is this correct?
If the above problem is solved, now we have to mount the pulley to the wheel. It looks to me like the screws already in that wheel will interfere with the AM pulleys mounting holes. Is it worth it to go without the mounting holes that interfere? Also, drilling and accurate hole in that slope looks challenging. Can you give any recommendations for keeping your holes straight and within reasonable tolerance when drilling at such an extreme angle?
And just to make this a bit more broad, can anyone suggest methods for wheel that come without a useful bore size? Such as wheels whose bearings don’t naturally fit with the KOP bolts? Re-drilling a drivetrain mount point poorly can wreak havok on a low-resource team’s season. Any suggestions that make attempting it more worth it than simply waiting for backordered parts?
Monochron,
Thanks so much for your perspective in grounding the discussion. You are perfectly on track in that I am trying to have a much simpler discussion due to a lot of unfamiliarity with these changes. In our specific case we do have access to a lot of advanced tools through a relationship with a sponsor, but it order to leverage that help we have to tell them exactly what we want and figuring out what that is can be difficult at times.
Last time we used the skyway wheels was over 10 years ago. Keyed shafts and keyed hubs. We ordered the 9x3" with the bead-lok hub, but it isn’t going to be easy to interface, and they are not pneumatic.
The 8x2 Colson is probably a better choice, with hubs from Vexpro or WCP, if non-pneumatic. If you can use 6" pneumatic, it looks like WCP has a very nice option.