Wheels

[GreenTeaTastesGood]

Anybody who uses wheels not from BaneBots? If so, where do you buy them from that is not as heavy?

[pumptato-cat]

I 3D print my wheels. I've also heard of people drilling holes in Banebots.

[BobaTeaTastesGood]

I 3D print my wheels. I've also heard of people drilling holes in Banebots.

How do you get them to grip? O-rings? Balloons? Urethane?

[bobbbbb]

Balloons. They slipped a lot, though. I switched to rubber bands later on but I don't know how useful that'd be at higher speeds. I've also heard of some people using silicon molding or something for the car treads but I don't have a lot of information on that.
My car last year had an average run time of 4.5sec. I guess I gave up speed for accuracy, and I'm not sure if my rubber band/balloon method would hold up at <2.5sec.

[bobbbbb]

I also 3d printed my wheels last year, and I used plasti-dip (rubberized coating spray) for grip. I've heard that other liquid rubbers work better, but this did the trick for me since my car was pretty light. I tested it by pushing it pretty hard on a hardwood floor, and when the wingnut braking system engages it stops pretty much instantly, no skidding as far as I can tell.

[mnoga]

We use the T40 wheels with 4mm hubs. Those wheels and hubs are pretty light with respect to the energy produced by dropping a 1.5 kg weight from a distance of around 0.9 meters.

[theskyistillred]

We using 12cm regular size dvds and 8cm minidvds

[Godspeed]

A bit of a side note for people who do use Banebots: how do you all keep your wheels clean? Mine tend to get a lot of dust really quickly. Thankfully this hasn't seemed to affect performance significantly (at least last year) but with the aspect of turning this year, I do think it'll be more of an issue.

[brian9640]

A bit of a side note for people who do use Banebots: how do you all keep your wheels clean? Mine tend to get a lot of dust really quickly. Thankfully this hasn't seemed to affect performance significantly (at least last year) but with the aspect of turning this year, I do think it'll be more of an issue.

Actually we have found dirty wheels have a large impact on stopping. My students use masking tape to clean the wheels. This is done for every competition run and every couple of practice runs.

[pumptato-cat]

A bit of a side note for people who do use Banebots: how do you all keep your wheels clean? Mine tend to get a lot of dust really quickly. Thankfully this hasn't seemed to affect performance significantly (at least last year) but with the aspect of turning this year, I do think it'll be more of an issue.

It definitely impacts performance(made my car run slower somehow idk). Mine would get dirty after every couple runs so during practice, I'd use isopropyl wipes (70%? Can't remember) to wipe every wheel between 3-5 runs. The week leading up to competitions I'd wipe them every 2 runs.