Hey CD! We are using MK3 swerve modules and had some weird tearing issues on our modules today which use the blue nitrile.
Here’s some pictures - it is full on debonding to the tread core, which is an issue we haven’t had at any other point this season. The tread itself is not fresh - we put it on two weeks ago for drive practice, but normally we had been seeing standard wear as seen in image 3 on the right tread which makes sense - the debonding is weird.
The drive was a little more gittery than normal, but nothing has otherwise changed with the robot and we’ve been on a flat field the whole time.
We’ve seen the same thing with the blue and black nitrile and the thrifty bot swerve. It starts as small tears or delams and quickly progresses. I know other teams have seen it too, because we bought some of our modules used and they had the same tearing.
Delamination is apparently an issue with all conveyor belting. It varies from lot to lot, and seems to be worse with side loading (eg bending the tread, particularly common in cases like a WCD getting T-boned).
We saw the same failures on our MK3s using blue nitrile tread. We think it happened because of a lot of sliding the wheels sideways under defense. On recommendations from a few other people we switch to black neoprene. McMaster 5994k1, it comes in various widths and lengths. When using blue nitrile we had to switch after one day of competition. Our current tread has got us through 1.5 competitions and some practice and is still usable, worn down a bit, but usable. Cannot recommend black neoprene enough. We also added a SlewRateLimiter on the drivetrain to prevent wheel slip caused by excessive acceleration.
