Track Research

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By Maxwell Nguyen, Project Manager

 The rover team is researching new ideas for treads/tracks for the rover.  The current tread belt is one continuous belt that takes hours to print.  In addition, one small mistake could potential ruin the entire track and make it completely useless.  In order to fix this problem, we will be looking into a new design that allows the belt to be split up into separate pieces.

Upon further research, we concluded that it was best to create our tread belt to resemble tank treads.  Tank treads are effective and can be produced as individual pieces before linking them into one continuous belt.  This will allow for faster track production and reduce the margin for error on the manufacturing end.

When searching for tank track models on Thingiverse (an open source community for 3D models and printing), we narrowed down three different types of tracks.  They can be viewed in the links below:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:163489

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:163486

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:199713

We will be working closely with the manufacturing division to develop a set a tracks and a new wheel to fit that will meet our rover’s needs.