I was wondering what would be a good replacement for the Vex official field tiles. We are a new team and we don’t have the money to spend almost $230. I have been looking around and found these from Amazon. The tiles are similar to the Vex ones in dimensions and I was justwondering if these would be a good replacement, if there are other ones that would do the job, or if we just need to raise the money to buy the real thing. All help is appreciated.
We tried some tiles similar to those from Amazon to save money, and I kind of wish we had just sprung the extra money. The Vex mats are thicker than most of those on Amazon, and I had to rig the fence mounting since they were thinner. If you are wanting just the 6’x12’, that may not be wasted money. I highly recommend something because turning on mats is different from slick floors. Just be warned if you ever want to have a complete field set, you might have to make modifications or workarounds to the game kit.
Edit: I just looked, and I had ordered 3/8" tiles instead of 1/2" ones, so those may be close enough. I found that any tiles are better than no tiles when it comes to friction.
I would get at least a couple vex tiles to test how your robot will run on actual match fields, with the appropriate friction between wheel and tile - this is particularly important if you plan on creating a precise autonnomous period and/or programming skills.
Thanks for the replies, I’ll talk with my mentor and we’ll decide on what to use