How do wheels affect a Vex V5 Drive?

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
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Hi. I’m part of a new Vex V5 team, and I’m wondering how the size/amount/type of wheels on a drivetrain affect a robot. Can someone please explain how this works and what combination of these three things is the best.

Also, what would be your preference for these three things this season (Push Back)?

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yes wheels definitely have an impact, key relationships

  • Larger wheels → higher top speed, lower acceleration
  • Smaller wheels → lower top speed, higher acceleration

these relationships have to do with the wheel radius and torque. You can choose your wheel size depending on what you would like to achieve.

Keep in mind that wheels come in:

  • 2in(only really used for odom or mechanum)
  • 2.75in (widely used)
  • 3.25in (widely used)
  • 4in (rarely used)
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sorry for the double post even though im a regular, I still don’t know how to edit. @DRow plz help

for your other questions, that I did not see, about amount and type.

amount
The amount of your wheels help with your bot sinking into the tiles

key relationships

  • more wheels → less sink in, more acceleration, more friction
  • less wheels → more sink in, less acceleration, less friction

Wheel Type
This is an interesting topic because there are a variety of wheels in VEX. but here are the main 3:

  • Omni wheel (By far the most common wheel and def should buy) → more ability to turn and drift. Concerns: if you are a new team or your driver is new, I would not suggest going for a complete omni wheel drive, since it may be hard to control.
  • Traction wheel (acceptable and great wheel) → if you are going to use these, I recomend putting them in the center of your drive base to give a better turning radius, this wheel prevents other teams from pushing you from the side unlike the omni wheel.
  • mecanum wheel (sorry is still don’t know how to spell this wheel. Rarely used, comes in 4in legacy or 2in gen2) → this wheel is really only viable if you buy the gen 2 version and you run it on 600rpm. Honestly, not meta for most games.

Bling Drive
There is one last thing I was to say about wheels. This is about bling drive, to build a great bling drive is tough. In the past, to build this, teams would screw in screws in between the omni wheel rollers to extend the roller. Therefore, the wheel circumference increased, which would put pressure on that wheel. However, recently on of the top teams 2654E echo, has problably one of the best bling drives ever. What they did was that they have a lowered traction wheel just enough so that the robots weight rests on that wheel, but does not tip the bot.

For a new team I do not recommend making this drive as it is super tedious and hard to pull off.

I hope this post gives you a better understanding of the wheels because when I started in VEX I did not have any of this information.

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They got rid of edits after people made posts that got approved and edited them to something that wouldn’t be.

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