Mecanum Drive or X-Drive?

VEX V5 General Discussion General Forum
#1

Which is better, a Mecanum or X-Drive?

#2

Although mecanum drives are enticing and seem almost better than any other drive, I would consider them the worst drive from all the common drives. Not only do mecanum wheels add a lot of weight, strafing of a mecanum drive is only 1/4 of its full speed. That is the max speed it can go while strafing. I would highly recommend a X-Drive out of experience. I used a X-Drive in the Skyrise season, and a mecanum drive in half of the NBN season, and I really disliked driving the mecanum drive as it was slow and strafing was a dud since it was so slow.

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#3

I would argue for an X holonomic drive as well due to the versatility of wheel sizes and speed you can mess with and the ability to use those omni wheels for other drive trains if you find strafing to not be as useful as you thought in testing.

#4

I would go with a X-Drive chassis because you can easily strafe faster than you can with holonomic drives and the holos are slower because if you dont have torque you will burn out pretty often, versus X-Drives you can gear them turbo and not burn out until you push against something too Hard.

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#5

X-drive for sure in my opinion.

#6

Yeah, they seem to be the most popular for speed and especially strafing

#7

That means that you would have to dedicate 4 motors to the drive train. Leaving only 8 motors for whatever you do. I dont feel like that is enough for for this game… Strafing and speed seem super important though. Lots of ideas though.

#8

actually 10, unless you do 8 and pneumatics

#9

Well if you have a four motor drive train and you have 12 motors total, then you have 8 left. math errors kill robots

#10

yeah you are limited to only 12 and no pnuematics or 10 motors and pneumatics

#11

Alright so, here are the pros and cons of X-Drive and Meccanum:
X-Drive:
pros-
about 25% faster than wheels straight forward omni-wheels in an H-Drive
Allows Strafing
Easy to use
cons-
Can’t handle too much weight or it will slow down or break a fuse in a motor

Meccanum:
pros-
Strong and durable for being in an H-Drive
Can be fixed to be faster by gear ratio
Allows Strafing
cons-
Without a gear ratio, the drive is a turtle.

If you have meccanum on a gear ratio, I would highly suggest them due to its space efficiency (Although most say no). I also think that, although an X-Drive is really efficient on movement, meccanum drives will be much more useful in these matches due to how much space is free with them, and the free space will help with in-taking or shooting space.

#12

Would using turbo gears on a mecanum drive lessen the speed gap between the two?

#13

Not by a lot, they pretty much max out at speed motors, when you use them for strafing anyways.

#14

yeah and turbo for mecanum is still going to be less then turbo for X drive

#15

4 is the minimum number of motors I would put on a drive. 2 means you are extremely slow or constantly burning out

#16

I think this only applies when there is a possibility of playing defense or pushing battles. For this game, for a light robot, I think you could definitely get away with a 2 motor drive. Not that I would recommend it, but you could.

#17

It would have to be geared very slowly, though.
I’ve considered my motor allocation and I have two spare motors. I’m not saying I will come November, but I don’t see why a two-motor drive would be necessary.

#18

I haven’t started prototyping yet, just tossing ideas around, but 2 motor drive + 4 motor lift + 4 motor catapult + pneumatic intake is one possibility.

#19

Or a 4 motor lift/catapult transmission? If the lift is only for hanging, you can ratchet the catapult motors. Otherwise, you can use a pneumatic transmission to shift between the 2. That opens up 4 more motors for a drive, or 2 and 2 for an intake.

#20

I hadn’t considered a transmission; I wanted to save all my air for the intake. However, I’ll think about it, and that certainly opens up more motors. Thank you.