foam wheels yay or ney?

[blackbeard]

i've seen these wheels online that are basically a plastic hub covered in an inch or 2 of foam. they're pretty cheep too. anyone use these?

[Razor Concepts]

They are alright but barely get any traction on smooth surfaces (like kitchen linoleum or hardwood), especially if there is dust since the wheels will absorb it and have even less traction.

[Joker94]

rubber tyres are only a few bucks, is there a reason why rubber are unsuitable

[blackbeard]

oh i was just wondering how they were. i was a bit sceptical about their usefulness bit i'd hate to pass up a useful bit without at least knowing how well it works

[matt liao]

they are useful!
The foam material is very soft, when the foam wheels are installed in one small robot car, they can have more deformations and have more contact areas than rubber wheels, so the friction is relatively bigger!

[Joker94]

don't get me wrong,foam wheels are great but are not suitable for some applications.

they woulg be fine on a bot like the $50 or a small bot that dose not require a large work load.

[ArcMan]

I use those foam wheels on many robot projects - most recently on a maze robot.  Very sticky on the smooth painted surface - it's surprising how much traction you get.  Intuitively one would think that foam would have poor traction on a smooth surface - not true with this foam rubber wheel.

[Joker94]

i know you can get tyres that are like %40 rubber to %60 foam to rovide more traction and to strengthen the wheel a little bit to stop it from disintergrating.

[Admin]

I bought a set of 4 foam wheels about 7 years ago. I've used them for about 5 different robots (see my robots), including on rough concrete, and there has been no noticeable wear or degradation. Not even dry-rot.

Fine dust does tend to collect on them, altering color a bit, but water can quickly wash it off.

[Joker94]

from what admin says, they are a good buy

[blackbeard]

hmm i'll have to get a few of these

[Joker94]

me to, for some reason i have always gone with rubber

[FingerTech Robotics]

The foam wheels sold at FingerTech Robotics are actually a foam rubber compound that is very grippy.  They are used in sumo and combat robot tournaments with great success.  They normally have no way to fix to a motor shaft but you can see at the link below there are "Lite Hubs" that make mounting extremely simple.

http://www.fingertechrobotics.com/products.php?cat=Wheels+%26+Hubs

[Admin]

I bought mine at towerhobbies many years ago, they have a huge selection (3 pages):
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0095P?FVSEARCH=foam+wheels&search=Go

I got the Lite Flites (pair) similar to that on FingerTech's site, but I think it was 3.5" or 4" (can't remember).



I also got some rubber wheels, but they were kinda heavy and had too little friction (bad).

Lots more here:
http://search.hobby-lobby.com/psearch/svc/search.php?uid=1&q=foam+wheel&submitit.x=0&submitit.y=0&submitit=Search