hi in this video we're going to talk about a few things that we've learned about making reliable
drivetrains one of the most important things about making a reliable drivetrain is keeping everything
simple and the easiest way to do that with a four-wheel-drive system is to have a motor for
every single wheel and that's what we've done right here and what this really helps with is
make sure that there aren't really any mechanical failures in your drivetrain and it also means that
you can easily access the motors and diagnose any problems important thing to do in FTC especially
with games that have small game elements such as RESQ is to make a skirt that goes around
your robot that protects their drivetrain agains these game elements and we usually make ours out
of polycarbonate because it's a pretty flexible material that can be durable enough against the
debris and also be sturdy enough that it deflects it out of the way in FTC there's a huge variety of
wheels that you're able to use and picking the right one is very important so to start off we
have the Tetrix wheel which is a pretty squishy rubber on the outside and it's pretty rounded
so you have a center pivot point when you're turning for a good reliability and also as a
pretty hard nylon inner core so it's very durable it also has a good Tetrix hole pattern to line up
and generally a really good wheel to use and they also have a three inch version not only as before
and so you have a lot of variability and there's also these wheels from Andy Mark and they come in
different durometers of rubber they also have a lined up Tetrix hole pattern the gray is the
hardest the black is slightly squishier and then there's blue which is even more soft and the main
difference there is the softer you have more traction but it's not as durable and the harder
is more durable but not as much traction and these are really good wheels very reliable and
you have a lot of variation there too then these wheels over here are more specialized there's
Mecanum wheels which we'll talk about later and there are a type of multi-directional wheel that
you need four of and allows you to move in all different directions and are very maneuverable
while still having pretty good traction over here our omni wheels which basically are a wheel that
has drive one-way and grip but then can move in another axis as well so can basically be
used as a swivel or powered swivel and these are the wheels are cool if you can stack them
up since they're relatively thin and basically have the same traction as one of these wheels
or similar traction and have another range of movement so these ones are from Tetrix there's
a three inch version and a four inch version and then there's also these ones from Andy Mark which
are these are these are actually two and they're just stacked up right now but they have a squishy
or rubber and the rollers are a little more square so depending on what your use case is these could
be more helpful another small trick with creating wheel bases that need a lot of power and torque
is using first of all three wheels but one trick about using this setup and being able to turn well
is making sure that this center wheel is further down than all the other ones and an easy way to do
this is using some small washers on the bottom of a motor mount or a bracket and that really helps
create the perfect amount of distance between these two wheels so that they're not riding on
the mat when you're turning and this allows you to turn really really well with a center pivot
point one of the more advanced yet useful drive trains that a lot of FTC teams use is the Mecanum
multi-directional drivetrain and what this is is a series of wheels that have angled rollers that
allow you to move in all different directions not only forward and backward and turning and really
what this is is a whole bunch of wheels that have diagonal rollers arranged in this X pattern where
these two are both pointing in and these two are both pointing in and what this creates is a drive
train that can still move forward and backward and do the normal turns but it also allows you
to move either these wheels both in and these will it both out and so you'll move left and right and
that's really really useful because you're able to maneuver around whatever obstacles
you need by using this advice you'll be able to make reliable and well-suited drive trains