In the past few years one of FIRST suppliers has offered premade plastic hub inserts for the Skyway wheels. I thought it was Small Parts but they don’t appear anywhere on their website. Skyway isn’t showing them either. Anybody know the source and whether they are still available?
I am almost 100% sure they were in Small Parts also. Maybe they are not making them anymore since the aren’t our supplier this season?
THere is an extra section in the manual that contains extra parts that are not in the regular Small Parts manuals. Appendix D
Looking at it the part # is
FIR-DC01 Wheel hub kit for 2 wheels
The coupler for the BOSCH drill is
FIR-DC02
Hope that helps
Matt
The wheel mounts and drill motor couplers were supplied by Small Parts. I hope that someone will at least post a design so that teams can build these, if they aren’t supplied.
In our first year, they were not available and we had all manner of difficulties with mounting the drill motor to the wheels. I think many other teams had these same problems, hence the couplers.
We actually made a hub piece last year so that we could use the skyway wheels. We knocked out the bearings and machined some of the spokes down to give us flush surfaces. Although I made the parts on a rotary table, they can mostly be done on a lathe with a template for the hole pattern made on a mill.
If anyone is interested, I’ll try to pull up the drawings and post them.
Then again, who knows? We may not have drill motors or skyway wheels in the kits this year.
Andrew
Team 356
*Originally posted by Cory *
**I am almost 100% sure they were in Small Parts also. Maybe they are not making them anymore since the aren’t our supplier this season? **
I too confer that they were supplied by SPI and they usually were listed on a supplement to their catalog in the kit of materials.
I received the email blast about the new supplier, but does that mean that Small-Parts inc. is no longer a sponsor??
*Originally posted by Cory *
**I am almost 100% sure they were in Small Parts also. Maybe they are not making them anymore since the aren’t our supplier this season? **
Anyone know for sure ?
FOR SURE they were ordered from small parts and this was the schematic
no are they sure about small parts isent our supplier this year
They are not our main supplier any more. MSC took their place. I dont know if they will still be affiliated with FIRST. Anyone else know?
Who is MSC and how are you sure?
MSC is a very large industrial supply company. You can vist their website at http://www.mscdirect.com This http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15512 thread has the specifics
Cory
I’m actually glad to see Small Parts go. They are nifty, but I wince at their prices and this little “exclusive deal” they had with FIRST had made them… well, IMHO arrogant. They lost 2 of our orders last year, and we had REALLY crappy customer service from them. Personally, I never would buy anything from them for my team EVER AGAIN - if they were our “official” supplier this year, I would have bought parts elsewhere after verifying that it’s in the SP catalog.
Does any team have any extra hubs they are willing to part with?
**Also I spoke with Small Parts on the phone and the hub kit is no longer available.
The hubless sprockets which pair to the hubs are still available, though I couldn’t find them listed in the catalog online.
It is probably best that they are no longer available. The traction requirements of this and last year’s game pretty much rule out using those caster wheels. Order some keyed bearing hubs on your choice of skyway wheels. Order some keyed roller chain sprockets from MSC and you don’t need to mount a sprocket to the wheel hub. Much better mechanically and much easier to mount and change out sprockets.
I am putting together an order for 5/8" sprockets from MSC which have keyways. We are still waiting to receive our big catalog from them so I am doing this via the web. What I need to know is if they are offering FIRST teams a discount. Can somebody reply to this post or send me an email directly with this information!!! I need to get my gear order in ASAP:ahh:
APS
team 497 may have an extra set that they can part (trade) with
let me check
check my profile and email me this evening
dahl