Sehome Swerve Drive 2

thingiverse

This swerve drive, nominally designed for FRC competition, is a lighter weight, but vastly simplified, version of my earlier swerve drive (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1135618). It is almost completely 3D printable. The heart of this design is the integrated low-profile steering bearing that uses 6mm Airsoft pellets as bearing balls. It also uses a twisted timing belt to simplify the mechanics. Note that this design is for very lightweight robots - I wouldn't recommend a total weight per wheel of more than 20 lb or so. (The swerve unit itself weighs about 5 lbs.) It is also intended to be very fast - up to 20ft/sec! The wheel tread should be grippy enough for good acceleration, but you won't win and pushing wars. In fact, if you make the tread any grippier, you run the risk of breaking components in a collision (rather than the wheels just sliding on the carpet). Also note: This design has only gone through very preliminary testing. As we do some more abusive testing, I'll post those results here. *UPDATE:* So far, we've hooked it up and driven it around a little. Everything is operating quite smoothly so far. Next up is getting our full swerve drive control implemented so that we can really beat on it!