FTC Locking Mecanum Wheel Design Progression

Here's LMec's journey through most of this year (I seem to have lost a ton of photos from v4-v7 so those are sparse but this should cover most of it). Locking Mecanum was a large part of FTC 16461's Worlds Innovate award in 2022, and has helped us with a lot! The basic concept of the mechanism is that mecanum wheels aren't resistant to defense and have a fair amount of slip, so we aim to combat that. Using servos, this mechanism brakes all of the rollers of a mecanum wheel in place, making it so that it acts as a traction wheel (approx. benefits of 1.4x traction and 1.2x acceleration). This design process used parts from REV, goBILDA, and ServoCity, as well as filaments like PLA, ABS, TPU, and NY-KV. This concept was previously worked on by FRC #3026 Orange Crush in 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcohV6GkZmg) and VCC #61 in 2019 (https://youtu.be/aXS6ZTC-pdg). If you have any questions about the mechanism or process, leave a comment, email me at [email protected], or send me a message on discord at daevii.#2786