We are looking into purchasing MK4/i Swerve Drive modules for next season. However, we would like to spend as little money as possible while getting a good product. We would like to, if possible, use NEO Rev1/.1s (Also, would you advise against mixing these?) as our drive motors, and were wondering if it was possible to use NEO 550s as the azimuth/turning motor.
Is this feasible? Is there a product we would need to purchase in order to use the pinion. Is there an alternative mounting plate we need to buy/make. We don’t have access to a mill ourselves, but we have 3d printers and can commission a machine shop if we need to.
This is probably not a great idea on the MK4/MK4I. You could probably get a planetary to help you and make it work…but then you’ve increased the cost over just buying another Neo.
As far as mixing Neo 1.1s and 1…it doesn’t matter. The 1.1s have more mounting options.
If you are trying to save cost on swerve, you should probably be looking at the MAXSwerve or SwerveXS. They are lower cost, lighter, and still used by some of the top robots*.
*MAXswerve was used by top teams. SwerveXS is a similar design that has not seen a full season yet.
Use MaxSwerve or WCP Swerve XS if you would like to go as cheap as possible and use Neo 550.
To so it on a MK4I you would need a gearbox with shaft that would work with one of the pinions so 8mm or kraken spline. Then it would be so tall you would have to flip the motor and run it above the module.
Could we not just buy a set of NEO550 pinions that direct drive into the azimuth gearbox and then build a new mounting plate? I feel like that would be cheaper than the $20 price delta between the motors, as well as the increased power usage.
You are much better off using the motors intended for the modules. I understand a few hundred dollars in difference is relevant, but factor in the time cost of anything associated with using a neo550 in an MK4 module, as well as the cost of not having code from other teams you can quickly use once your swerve is assembled. You would likely save yourself days, if not weeks, in machining and programming headaches by just going with neos/sparks or even new krakens.
maxswerve or the WCP Swerve XS would fit what you currently have, or make specific fund raising efforts for additional neos/sparkmaxes. I definitely feel the latter is worth the effort.
You can also reach out to teams in your area who might be switching over to the Vortex and Spark Flex or Krakens and are looking to get rid of Neos and Spark Maxes at a discount or possibly even for free.
I don’t personally know of any teams in northern Michigan looking to replace their motors, but I’m sure there are plenty. This is a good idea actually, thank you a lot. I’ve been looking into Swerve XS, and assuming it’s a good product this season, it seems to be a good choice.
My only hesitation there is that you may not find code from other teams that fit that exact module.
Definitely think beyond just price when your team is making this decision. Swerve can be daunting for a lot of teams, but it doesn’t have to be if you use hardware that many others are using. Makes the transition much much easier. The Swerve XS is a new product, it might not have high adoption rates like the SDS MK4, the WCP Swerve X, or the MaxSwerve.
I know our programming team was planning on writing all of their own libraries anyways. One of my main concerns with this is, with so many companies releasing swerve, how many of these will still exist in 5 years when we need to buy parts?
I understand that this a bad idea, and if we did this it would likely only be for one season. $250 of motors is expensive, but it’s not the biggest pill we’ve had to swallow (our mill and bandsaw both broke last year and had to be replaced).
My first choice would be Kraken X60s on MK4is. I’m currently just trying to price out my options and give these to the business team. It would be great to be able to buy enough Krakens and MK4i modules to run it at a competition, but with cold spares being a concern it skyrockets the price up to almost $6,000.
CD isn’t allowing me to attach my spreadsheet with this info. I’ll throw a screenshot below. When it says “BARE MINIMUM PRICE,” it’s the price for 4 modules and the associated motors (plus a few extra treads/wheels). The Cum. Price is the total cost minus parts we own. It seems expensive, and I feel like there should be a way to get this cheaper.
SDS, WCP, and MaxSwerve are in my opinion pretty safe bets for staying around. SDS has been producing these modules for several years now, so I think their longevity is a bit above the rest since it is also their primary product.
No. The motor characteristics are too far apart. The NEO 550 has twice the free speed of the NEO, and only ~35% of the stall torque. Given the size of the NEO 550, I’d be concerned about it getting dangerously hot at that gearing without substantial testing.
For reference, MAXSwerve is designed specifically for the NEO 550 and has over twice as much total reduction as a NEO 550 would adapted into a SDS module with no additional gearbox.
We’ve always gotten by with just one spare module, and across four full seasons of swerve we have yet to even need that. If cash is an issue, I’d be comfortable taking a full module off that spreadsheet for each option.
Your motor counts also don’t line up. Is there a reason you’re ordering an extra set of motors and controllers on top of the extra sets you’re already ordering for the extra modules? My team at this point just uses the SPARK MAX and NEO everywhere, so rather than a dedicated drivetrain spare, we have a few spares for the entire robot. You seem like you’re already using them as well, so I’m not sure why spares would be a swerve-specific cost. (For reference, the only swerve motor we’ve ever replaced was a Falcon 500 that got crushed on a MK4 during contact inside our frame perimeter.)
Why the negative note on MAXSwerve? It had one widespread issue with the plastic wheel in its debut season that has been well-documented and resolved - and based on your price of $320 and not $305, you’d be splurging for the aluminum wheels anyway. While I’ve loved all of our SDS modules (we’ve used MK2, MK4, and MK4i), we bought them before MAXSwerve released. If I was on a team looking at swerve for the first time in 2024 and money was at all tight, I’d be happy ordering MAXSwerve.
We also find the black neoprene is good for more than one event. 25 extra pieces of tread is very excessive, unless you’re fortunate enough to be getting hours of practice in everyday by February.
I’m a little confused by your “count needed” for these items. 6 modules and 14 motors implies that you are building two full spare modules, putting motors on all of them and also having 2 spare motors. Our standard practice has been to have only one spare module and it has been many years since we have actually needed to use it. If you have motors on your spare module, then you can always swap one of those motors onto an otherwise good module if you have a motor failure. So, I would not plan to purchase any more than 5 modules and 10 motors.
There are a couple of other options to consider for the SDS modules.
You could use Kraken motors as the drive motor and take advantage of the higher efficiency and higher performance for speed/acceleration and then use NEOs for steering. Since you already own 4 NEOs, that would help your budget a lot.
You could look at Colson wheels instead of the treaded wheels. The module price is a little cheaper ($365 instead of $377) and the Colson wheels seem to wear a lot better and you should not need replacement treads (or at least fewer replacements).
Updated my spreadsheet to reflect these changes. Haven’t changed the price to Colson wheels because I was lazy. Could you explain all the benefits and drawbacks of each? I mean, they wouldn’t sell treaded if there wasn’t a reason for it.
I’m also now realizing that while I added the V1s to the vortexes as an option I never did so on the krakens/falcons… I’ll update that in a bit and replace the link in place.
There is much discussion on Colson wheels for swerve in several other threads.
I recommend reading this thread (which has some embedded links to the others)
We used colson wheels on our custom swerve prior to 2023. In 2023 we switched to the SDS modules and the treaded wheels. So we have some experience with each.
The main advantage we were expecting with tread over Colsons was a higher Coefficient of Friction. This, in theory, gives you better acceleration and pushing power if you are traction limited. Some recent testing by Spectrum and Vex offered some contradictory data on what the CoF differences are between Colson wheels and Treaded Wheels. But both test do seem to confirm that treaded wheels offer a higher CoF than Colson wheels. I can’t say that we saw a huge advantage from this, but we really did not run them back to back on the same robot, so it is hard to say.
The main disadvantage of treaded wheels that we were expecting was tread wear (and frequent changes). I will say that we did not really experience this problem. We had similar levels of wheel wear and changes between both. But the colson wheels we had previously used were 3/4" wide and had a thin layer of the rubber material over the hard plastic core. The wider wheels that SDS is using have much thicker rubber and many teams are reporting really good wear characteristics from these wheels.
Another concern that was raised in previous seasons with tread wheels was a perceived increase in field damage potential (burning a hole in the carpet if the wheels were spinning). I think this has basically been disproven at this point. Most wheels can burn a hole in the carpet if you let them spin while not moving (pushing against the wall or another robot).
My main fear in using Colson wheels is breakage. We have had a lot of issues with plastic cored wheels breaking for any variety of reasons, generally dropping them or even hitting walls at a high enough speed. I realize billet is more expensive, but at least I feel this would entirely solve this problem.
It has gotten so extreme that we have about 10 am14u5 wheels left that work from our total of 11 kits we’ve bought.
Those wheels are way different than Colsons. We are actually going to use 3d printed tread over the conveyor tread on our mk4i robot this year. We use neos on ours and in a couple years haven’t had to break out our 1 spare module. It would actually cost more money to use a 550 for steering on a mk4i when you consider the time, energy, and fabrication to do it.
Edit: if you are using the neo ecosystem and are used to programming it i would stick with it and if you want to go faster or have more power you can just swap vortexes in place of the neos
I’m specifically referring to the wheels taking that fall.
Also, the price delta is $7 per module or like $30 total. I feel this price difference (even with the increased tread cost) is far worth just the durability of metal. I don’t know if my concerns are genuine here as I’ve never been hands-on with either wheel.
That is completely understandable. There are teams like the Robojackets that will run nothing else but colson wheels because they trust them that much. Our team on the other hand have decided to do the 3d printed wheel route. We have a version that is fully 3d printed with built in suspension and a tread version to use on the aluminum wheels. It just depends on the game field as to which wheel we will use
