Wheels

Support Mechanical parts
1

I kind of like these Pololu wheels - they come various sizes and colors and I see them on a collection of robot part websites, so they seem to be popular. But it’s so hard to get a feel for parts without being able to touch them. Maybe someone can comment on the following -

  • I’m planning to put a pair of wheels on a 3mm single axle driven at up to 4500 rpm. I don’t really expect it to get to that speed, but it will probably exceed 1000 rpm. If I use the 3mm axle with a flat, will they remain square and secure at high speed?

  • If I go with the seperate aluminum hub to ensure squareness to the axle, can I get the hub well centered on the wheel, or is there a lot of slop in the mounting holes?

  • What is the weight of the various sizes of wheel - preferable broken out between wheel and tire.

I’m currently using some ‘Lego Technics’ wheels of about 3.5" diameter, but they are heavy and crude - they frequently start to vibrate so violently that they come off of the shaft or lose a tire. I’m hoping to make a significant improvement in this area.

Thanks.
skibo

2

Hello, skibo.

From my experience, there should not be a problem centering one of our universal mounting hubs on the wheel. The combined weights of the wheel and tire for each size wheel is on each product page under the “Specs” tab. The tire for the 60mm and 70mm wheels weigh about 0.15oz and tires for the 80mm and 90mm weigh about 0.24oz.

I am not sure how those wheels would perform at those speeds in your particular setup, but I tried some of those wheels on some of our 5:1 micro metal gearmotors with no load and they seemed fine.

- Grant