Rubber Band Intake Wheel

This part was designed to be used instead of a gear or sprocket to hold rubber bands for a a robotic intake/ingester of small objects such as wiffle balls. (We found the gear teeth to be too abrasive on our rubber bands.)

In the current configuration, it has a 3.5" outer diameter, 8 fingers to hold elastic bands, and 1/8" square drive (Vex style). Two are required. The Solidworks (educational license) source file is included for your modification.

Update: We found a 75mm configuration worked better for us. The Solidworks source file now includes hub cutouts for 4 axle standards (Vex, Rev, Actobotics, Gobilda).

Update 2:  A completely updated version is added without the external "fingers".  Many of the design features are parametric in the SolidWorks file.

Category: Robotics