Does anyone know anywhere to buy mecanum wheels that isn’t from andymark?
I don’t know of any practical for FIRST use other than andymark. Most teams either custom machine them, or use the AM ones. www.airtrax.com sells rather sizable wheels intended for electric vehicle use, such as forklifts.
What is wrong with Andymark wheels? My team, and most others, have been greatly satisfied by AM products.
One of the students on 1135 did a bit of research. (The team doesn’t have the resources to build their own.)
You have 2 options for an FRC-legal set.
- AndyMark
- Make your own.
And trust me, making your own isn’t as easy as it sounds. 330’s experimental sets were done by SLS some years ago. That’s the easiest way to do it, other than copying the AM design or maybe following 357’s process.
[Edit]It gets worse if you don’t want AndyMark. I just did a quick Google search. The first three hits were: Wikipedia, CD, and AM, in about that order. There wasn’t a whole lot else I could find that would help locate vendors–mostly what looked like papers on mecanums or CD (or FIRST/VEX) discussions, or videos of team’s robots. You’d think that companies selling them would be high on the list.[/Edit]
There was a team on Galileo that made their own mecanums that were very similar to the Andymark 8" ones… with the main difference being that the rubber rollers were actually turned to provide a smooth interface with the ground.
They assured me that no CNC equipment was used, and had photos to show how they did it. It wasn’t EASY, and it wasn’t quick… but it was good.
And no, I can’t remember their team name or number,
Jason
P.S. I thought I saw a photo of some VEX legal home-built mecanums on Chief Delphi a year or so ago…
Were the wheels (and team) purple and yellow? If so, they were 357, Royal Assault. They mold theirs, all of them.
Nope. These were very distinctly AM “knock-offs”, not the Jester Drive wheels of “Behind the Design” fame. In fact, I asked them how they liked the AM mecanums until they pointed out to me their improvements over the AM design. (mostly in the rollers… the side plates were almost identical).
Jason
Not sure but are u referring to this…?
I have a suspicion that it was this one, which is vex legal according to the post.
I was thinking of the second one, but the first one is pretty cool, too.
It seems there is more than one way to make a mecanum. Speaking of which the mecanums on the new FTC controller demo bot in Atlanta were pretty cool. I don’t have a photo of them, though.
Jason
O sweet, those look pretty sick. Thanks.
Ya, I have wanted to make a set of the second ones for a while now. I have the parts but not the time. 
yep we got our mecanum wheels from andymark this year. From what other teams said when talking to them at regs. those that had the 6inches didn’t like them as much we used the 8" and were very satisfied with them and will probably use them again in the coming years.
After filling out the survey for Andy and AM in Atlanta, he told me that a lot of the teams using the 6" mecanums had the same problem:the banged up plates. So he said that the design may be refined for a stronger side plate but AM doesn’t know for sure yet. I’m pretty eager to find out what they do next.