Our team is desiding bettwen Nitrile and Neoprene on our billet wheels for the 2024 season. Any advice?
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in my experience, Black Neoprene last longer, and iirc on sds or theifty’s website they claim the same thing as well.
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We ran black neoprene on our mk4i swerve modules last season and their durability was great. We only had to replace them once which we did between our second district event and district champs (so 2 full events per set of tread, district event 1 & 2 and then district champs and houston champs). Also, as mentioned above^ common consensus is that black neoprene lasts longer. We have also found that they have same/slightly better traction than blue nitrile.
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Have not used neoprene. But have heard it is great… as long as you buy from the right sources.
We’ve used blue nitrile from Andymark on our Max Swerve wheels and they were fine, but wore down to be pretty smooth after a weekend.
We tried using a similar blue tread material from McMaster, and it shredded to pieces and delaminated after a couple of matches. Your mileage may vary.
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I’ll add another vote for black neoprene treads. We also ran them last season after using blue nitrile in 2022 and the difference in durability was dramatic. We could go through a whole competition without replacing treads and still have good tread and traction on the carpet. With the nitrile, we were replacing tread every day at competitions.
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Just a slight disclaimer, with black neoprene be mindful where you drive it, skid marks are painful to remove.
Good discussion in this thread on the tread topic.
Note, not all tread of the same color is created equal.
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I’ve tried explaining this to a few folks and they just don’t get it.
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also worth mentioning that the first set of tread that was on our modules was stock from SDS and the replacement tread we bought from thriftybot and cut/drilled ourselves.
Option C - not listed here, still remains the best choice if you can find it.
I would says that is tpu printed tread that we have experimented with, which is great and is easier to install than conveyor tread
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neoprene is the better of the two imo, and it doesn’t leave blue chunks everywhere as a bonus
C’mon, Marshall. You KNOW that we all learn physics by watching the Road Runner, and material science from a box of crayons.
Then some of us go to engineering school.
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Still some of us continue to watch road runner and play with crayons while in engineering school…
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You stopped after school?
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Gotta say, many great ideas come from toons and crayons.
Not sure I’ll ever not find 'em funny…
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I have an Acme Products poster on my wall.
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I’ve posted on testing that I did between all the materials I could find so many times and no one bothers to search or listen so I stopped enabling folks and won’t tell them the answer anymore.
I have literally 20 posts explaining specifically why one of the materials is inferior and how it fails.
You can’t make them drink.