When we used them last year it also ended up messing up our turning a lot. I know we did it kinda weirdly by blinging all 4 of our drive wheels and not an idler wheel but that’s what we would be doing in this comp as well and I don’t want to mess up our turning for little benefit.
If you are going to use bling wheels, it should be two wheels in the center of your drive train to avoid problems with turning, and it should be a six wheel drive.
Ah I see what you’re talking about. You only have 4 wheels so that would shift the center of rotation. In that case, the bling wheels would probably be more trouble than they’re worth.
On the plus side, you can pull an awesome Tokyo drift and get points for style!
Yeah we realized that after trying to bling our 4 wheel drive. We didn’t have room to add more wheels so we just scrapped the idea of blinging our wheels for TP. I don’t think we will need to bling our wheels this year though, however if we have to I think we have the room for it.
I had “bling drive” (I prefer to just say “locked omnis” because it’s more intuitive to those who haven’t heard the term) last year with a steel chassis. It was next to impossible to push me. (Cortex robot, too. 6 motor drive, but 4 motors worked as well.)
I saw countless robots at State where I’m at that didn’t lock their omnis, and I just had to ask about it. Some didn’t know about it, some had a 4 wheel drive and didn’t want to shift their center of rotation, and some simply didn’t have defensive problems enough to warrant locking their wheels. (When given the disadvantages of weight, slightly larger size, and a little more friction.)
Does anyone know of any good guides on how to properly rubber band a DR4B?
Look at some ITZ reveals. People usually make a triangle with them on the bottom linkage.
This is a really nice triangle banding calculator: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/235244490/#player
Ideally you would want the purple line to be horizontal for constant force output by the bands but you can alter it for whatever curve you want.