I hope everyone is having a good year in robotics so far, however my team is having issues with getting new supplies. I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations on flex wheels. My team is a small freshman team and we have been doing robotics for a while but now we have our own option of getting supplies and materials for ourselves for robotics this year. We really want to have a flex wheel intake this year, but we don’t have any so we are forced to order our own. However, we have no clue what kind of diameter and durometer to get.
Anyone have any suggestions? We would really appreciate it because right now we have no idea what to expect. We are also on a really tight budget so we kinda can’t get a bunch of different types of flex wheels.
Thanks for your suggestions and I hope you have a good year in robotics
-H57589_Mechanic
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In my opinion I would go for the most squish which would be the 30a durometer because the allows the flex wheels to deform and really grip the rings and just gives you more flexibility on the distance between shaft and bottom ramp(if you made your intake a little too close to the ramp with say the 60a durometer then your intake would jam and not work but the 30a would flex more and be more likely to intake the ring through). Now
for diameter I would stick with 1.625in and 2in diameter 1. because they don’t require the versahub so they are cheaper for you to buy. 2. they would be lighter and easier to fit since they are smaller. Here’s an example of them being used for an intake with a combo of both 1.625in and 2in 30a durometer wheels.
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for this season 30a 2inch or 30a 1.65inch will be the best for intakes. make sure you order from vex webstie and not any other ones because only flex wheels sold by vex are competition legal.
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Get 2 inch 30A- they are the softest, and pretty much the only one teams use for intakes.
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My team has been exploring flaps and pneumatic tubing intakes. So far they have not worked very well at all. We will likely be switching to flex wheels.
How bad are the 45A and 60A? Will they work fine with proper tensioning? Is there anything else I should know before making intakes with the harder wheels?
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My team experimented with pneumatic tubing during the spin up and and it work just ok but at state right after alliance selection we got told that using the pneumatic tubing in our intake was illegal (the ref was misquoting the rule they used against us but we didn’t have time to argue with them) so basically we had to remake the front of our intake before our elimination match started.
There is nothing bad about the 45a and 60a flex wheels. They work great for the right situation. Personally i’ve never used the 45a but for example during spin up we used the 60a for our flywheel and i think the roller mech. The biggest advantage of the 30a is they offer more flexibility and could offer more grip if used right.
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Yeah the 45A ad 60A flex wheels would work fine just the stiffer material would have less grip than the 30A.
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honestly flex wheel intake isn’t really worth it my team did a hook intake which works way better. and also hood intakes take up too much space and require too much materials.
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You still need flex wheels for the first stage of a hook intake so it still applies. discuss hook vs hood here: Hook or hood?
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2 inch 30a are definitely the best option.