As promised - the tracked drive system design. Running track drives for these last 4 years on different machines always gave us trouble - but I have to admit the early ones were quite rudimentary systems
Main problems were : excessive side load on the motors as they were not supported at the far end, causing the motor to heat up and draw a lot of current. Another issue was track alignment, without proper precision engineering the track would try to slide off the wheels and rub against the sides.

In this new design the drive wheel is supported at both ends, that should take load off the motors. Alignment of the track is achieved by adjusting the forward idle roller. The fwd roller is mounted on shock absorbers which can be adjusted to move fwd or aft. This should hopefully keep everything aligned and tensioned . Both wheels are flanged to help prevent the track coming off...

The pics: :wink:


Tracked drive system V.04





Drive wheel and attachment to GR02 motor - exploded view





Drive wheel and GR02 assembly