Plastic omniwheels have no traction

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello,

I've got a project to make a robot with omni wheels. The robot is working nice but the omni wheels I bought are entirely made out of plastic.
The wheels don't have enough traction and omni wheels with rubber caster wheels can't be bought in the netherlands. the only website I found
charges 50 euro's shipment costs. So my question is if it is possible to put some kind of coating on my platic omni wheels to gain traction.
Is there some kind of rubber spray?

this are the omni wheels I'm using at the moment: Omniwheel Flexiwheel RS02EGD Robot conveyor omni wheel | eBay

Regards,
Bas

P.S. if anyone knows where i can buy rubber omni wheels and ship them to the netherlands for less then 25 euro's please send me the link.

2

I think there is no spray, but there must be paint.

there are some different out there (I think at Praxis also) look for the one that almost turns to rubber, because some will stay sticky or
turn in to sticky with a little heat.

I don't know anything for different wheels.

3

You can buy plastic that you dip the handles of tools in, say a pair of pliers, so they become "rubber coated".

Look up PlastiDip for an example.

4

You could try painting some rubber poster cement on the wheel surface. The cement is made to be removable which might let come off over time, but it provides a simple high friction surface.

5

Some of those wheels on the internet do look expensive!

Try these guys.

http://www.vexrobotics.com/276-2165.html

6

I wonder if a vacuum drive belt would do it. Some of them are small enough that I think they would stretch over the wheel. It might be possible to find rubber bands wide enough, or perhaps cut some cross-sections from a bicycle innertube to stretch around the wheels. If you use an innertube, wash the talc off.

There are also urethane drive belts / bands. Not sure how hard it might be to find any of an appropriate size.

7

Rubber bands........