Wooden Mars Rovers: Wooden Caster Wheels

While I’m waiting for my latest project to finish rendering, which will be sometime tomorrow – I began working on a very complicated model that I’m sure will be by far the most complex things I’ve designed so far.

A wooden version of the Spirit / Opportunity Rovers currently residing on Mars. As my only material is wood (by choice) and all my parts must be cut out of 2D – I think this is a great opportunity to really challenge myself. So far, I’ve spent the past two days working on just getting the wheels to function correctly. Here’s a picture.

Wooden Caster Wheels - each wheel is about 7cm in diameter.

There is still a lot of work to get things right but overall, I’m happy with how it’s coming along. Here is another picture showing a wheel in more detail as so much is hidden by the housing. Basically, with the use of cross-members, you have a free spinning inner wheel inside of the free spinning outer wheel – the axle doesn’t need to spin which makes it a must stronger model overall and simpler to build.

Solid axle (not shown), free spinning outer wheel with a free spinning inner wheel

Although I have many limitations set upon myself with this model, including (so far) a 10 minute rendering time – I think this will be a heck of a cool model. I’m not looking for 100% accuracy with it, my goal is to simply make it with a few moving parts regardless of how much it might end-up costing to actually produce. I enjoy the challenge of designing things that maybe others never thought was possible using only two items. A laser cutter and a piece of wood.

So much still left to learn, test and design…