On the Purdue SIGBots Wiki I saw something called “bling drive” (
) mentioned. It uses 6 wheels, but the middle 2 are locked omniwheels instead of regular omniwheels. Here’s an example:
Anyway, I was planning on using this drivetrain for this year. Are there any notable problems with this? Is there a better way to execute this 6-wheel drive? I only have 4 inch omniwheels, nothing smaller. I do have regular traction wheels (like this:
As the team that you used as an example (in the pic) - yes, it is very effective in countering being pushed from the side.
Traction wheels can give you similar effect, but traction wheels (if not mounted in the correct position) might give you problem when turning and also the diameter of traction wheels are not exactly the same as your omni-wheels.
If you want to look at the effectiveness of locked omni, just look for out 8059A matches during the Turning Point worlds
Locked Omnis are very effective at countering being pushed from the side, but there is a second reason that they are so effective - Because locked omnis have a very small increase in radius compared to regular omnis, in bling drives, the center wheel slightly pushes into the chassis, which helps increase friction with the floor.
I have used bling wheels before. There are plenty of alternative options now and a variety of wheels that can do the same thing that won’t permanently destroy the omni wheels entirely. I would highly suggest to consider alternatives unless absolutely necessary because once you turn omni wheels into bling wheels you cannot undo the damage on the rubber. Additionally, the small rollers have very thin rubber and will tear over time. Also, a screw may pop out and completely destroy your autonomous and perhaps driver control due to the wheel locking up. All of these things have happened to me before when I tried using bling wheels and I would strongly advise against using them and consider alternatives unless absolutely necessary.
Oh… my teams has switched to using flex wheels, etc for quite a while. But just that it wears off pretty fast (eg. Can’t last through 2 tournaments), so my budget is suffering.
I have personally never used a ‘bling’ drive but, if you dont want to put screws into your precious omnis you can use traction wheels which work the same way. Here’s a picture and a link for ya:
You can also use a flexwheels for this.
If you can’t afford to get new traction or omni wheels now, you can always experiment by adding lots of rubber bands or surgical tubing to existing traction wheels:
Who knows, maybe they’ll work good enough that you won’t need to buy any new expensive alternatives.
