Motor Mounts

I am building a small indoor model, differential drive, two wheels and a caster. Very standard,

The base is made of 3/16 plywood. I want to mount the motor on the top surface of the base so it doesn’t take away from the ground clearance. The motor bracket I have is a simple L-piece with four holes to screw to the base and two holes to screw to the motor. The wheel I have right now is 6cm diameter.

With that combination I get almost no ground clearance.

My option is to get a much bigger wheel.

Are there other options? For example if the bracket had less (or no) clearance between the motor and the plywood, this would gain me maybe 1cm of clearance. But still not much.

Any other suggestions?

Hello.

You might be able to lower the wheels by using a gear train, chain and sprocket, or belt and pulley system. Otherwise, aside from using larger wheels, I cannot think of any other practical ways to give more ground clearance without changing the layout of the robot. For example, something like this rover (which uses a rocker-bridge system similar to the mars rovers) elevates the main chassis of the robot.

Brandon