As the title suggests, what benefit do fairlane wheels have compared to Colsons or other wheels. I intend to use them on our shooter but I can’t just say, “every other team uses them” as a reason to why I can’t use other wheels.
We’ve never used them before and intend to try using them this season.
Depending on the material and the durometer you use, the grip and wear characteristics are far superior to any other wheel.
This is what prototyping is for. “Every other team uses them” is a reason to try them out on a prototype and see if they work better or worse. You should never be flying blind into a critical design choice like that.
Our 6" colsons are not well-balanced, and I’m not sure how we’ll go about balancing them. The 4" VEX Colson wheels are balanced a bit better, but still not quite perfect. Our plan is to figure out how balanced the Fairlane wheels are once ours get here.
Obviously if you haven’t used them before you should test them.
With a high RPM wheel and a surface like the ball has in years past glazing has been a huge issue. Basically the ball leaves a residue on the wheel that builds up over time and will affect your shooting. The Fairlane wheel has been the least prone to this glazing that I have used.
Mind specifying which material? I’ve heard the blue and yellow urethane Fairlane wheels pick up resiude a bit more than the black neoprene ones do.
Yes, the blue ones do glaze when used against plastics, the yellow ones much less. The 35A neoprene ones have never picked up game material from what I can remember and DO NOT glaze from this years game piece at all, pretty sure you will get similar results with the 60A as well.
How do the WCP Solid Roller Wheels compared to fairlane wheels?
Don’t you have to broach fairlane wheels to use hex shaft on them?
We don’t know, waiting on them to ship. I’m hoping they’re very comparable to the Fairlanes.
I’d assume they’ll be getting to teams this week, but that’s a question for @R.C
Updating my own status here - 2" wide solid roller wheels from WCP shipped today!
Yep, same!
You have to make a 1.25 inch diameter hub to press fit into the Fairlane wheel, you can make it whatever you want but take care to make sure it is centered well for balance.
It’s worth noting that Fixtureworks sells 1.125 ID Fairlane wheels, which is nicely compatible with most of the FRC ecosystem.
It’s also worth noting that we received wheels on thursday after ordering on monday - slower than mcmaster, but not by that much.
McMaster has done 2 hour shipping to us before. It’s hard to be faster than McMaster.
In this case, so why have you chose to shoot with the yellow urethane 35A, over the black neoprene 35A in 2017? As you said that the blue (same material as the yellow) do glaze…
This is what we did as well to test. Dont really care for them though, planning to go with a different wheel.
We have found Fairlane wheels to be very consistent like everyone else in the thread.
Only problem you could run into is they like to expand at higher rpms even the solid ones. To combat this we wrapped safety wire around the center of the wheel and then twisted it in turn locking it in place. This has worked very well and doesn’t effect the ball to dramatically.
We order the 11/4in ID wheels this season. And to get it adaptable to a 1/2in hex we took a short section of Vex Pro’s Aluminum Versa Roller and we center punched down the line in the on the tube this made it an almost press fit. As well as we used Red Loctite. After that we used the aluminum versa tube hubs and attached those to the roller.
In 2018 we used Fairlane wheels to intake the cube and they work well that year as well and had ally it grip. To attach them to hex this year tho we took 18t 35 chain sprocket and use loctite to attach those as well.
We’ve never had a problem with the hubs coming off. Through all 2017 season on our shooter and 2018 season on our intakes.
Do you have a picture of the safety wire?