Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

All he is saying is that if you take weight from the chassis and put it into a system that is even half an inch higher, you have raised your COM. Depending on your robots design, this may not be an issue.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

Oh, okay.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

It would depend on the game more or less. Sheet metal allows much more flexibility in shape to allow the robot to better fit the game piece(s). If it's a game heavy in defense, I would want the sturdiest bot on the field to withstand pushes of other bots and push others with ease, not having to worry about any weak points whatsoever.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

:rolleyes: Seeing lots of generalizations here such as "sheet metal is lighter than tube" and "sheet metal is weaker than tube" ect. ect.

Both sheet metal and tube's weight are totally dependant on how you use them.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

Well, yes, but you could just lose the weight completely and not even put it into a different system. You would just end up with a lighter robot in general.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

...and then, if you are concerned about being at maximum weight (perhaps you want to maximize traction) you have the ability to put additional weight exactly where you want it to create the best result.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

I'll challenge you on that.

The vast majority of sheet metal is done with 5052-H32 alloy aluminum due to how easy it is to bend. This ease of bending comes at a strength cost. (Matweb reports 13 ksi for 5052 and 40 ksi for 6061-T6). More material is then required to make the sheet metal design strong. I'd be very surprised if you could make a sheet metal drive base that is as strong and light as a well designed tube stock drive base (and I've designed a number of sheet bases).

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

What about milling/laser cutting lightening patterns into channel stock?

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

Completely doable. When I was on 2220, we did waterjet triangle cutouts on 4" channel in 2011, circular cutouts in 2012, and then we switched to tube for 2013 and 2014, which had rounded rectangular cutouts. Only had strength issues in 2012, and that was because of other stupid design choices. 2014 we had some of the most aggressive drive train lightening I've ever had manufactured and we had precisely zero issues with our drive train.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

Channel and angle are certainly accessible to more teams; We don't have any real ability to work sheet metal efficiently and effectively.

Most of the places that I have seen sheet metal used effectively that I could not even imagine how to do with angle/channel (short of a whole lot of welding, and reducing strength) were in the form of manipulators, for example some relatively flat claws with rollers between the two sheets such as were used by several ball pickups for Aerial Assist and a number of RC grabbers for Recycle Rush, and long arms with lots of lightening that looked almost like cantilever bridges until you got a bit closer.

Most of the chasses based on sheet metal appear to be executable in angle or channel extrusion for not a whole lot of additional weight, though I will admit that these are appearances, and quite possibly deceiving.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

NOTE: the COM in my profile picture

I accept you challenge.

you may be correct in the pressure needed to distort the metal (I don't have SolidWorks on this computer so i can't check) though this is when the metal is still in it's flatted form, my Dad is a civil engineer and I've asked him on shapes that would bare loads of weight, if you ever see a 'I' beam holding up a floor or roof you can see that vary little metal is required to hold a lot of weight, this is due to the form it had ( |-| ) <-- shape of an I-Beam) The flat side of this beam give the middle layer it's required strange as it distributes the force being applied to it, the same goes for sheetmetal,


if i have my flat piece of metal and apply said amount of force what i would get would be a traditional bend, how ever if i took that flat piece of metal and Bent bother sides so that it was making an ( [ ) form, and now tried to bend it with the same amount of force, you would see that the metal would no longer bend due to the extra support given off by the two linear walls, this is why support beams are in shapes of U's, I's, T's and L's, also triangles (but thats a completely different level of supports) if i remember correctly 9 so don't take this last part as fact... i believe it requires the for needed to bend the flat plate plus the force required to bend the two walls hight wise. all in all it is definitely a much more rigid way of making a robot base And this time it's 3:27 AM!!

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

The force required to deflect a cantilevered beam a distance X will be given by the formula 3EIX/L^3, where:

• E is the material's modulus of elasticity, which describes the degree to which a material will deform under load.
• I is the beam's cross sectional moment of inertia, which is the inertial resistance to rotation generated by the beam's shape, and in this case, accounts for the bending resistance inherit to the profile of the beam
• L is the distance between the rigid support and the application of load.

This same basic principle also applies to extrusions. Extruded frames also give the advantage of making an even more structurally sound shape, the rectangular box, available in a more weight-efficient manner than sheet metal does, in addition to being made from much stronger material as Austin mentioned. In a pure race to achieve a target strength with minimum weight and optimal design, extrusion will win on paper every time.

Now, whether or not this is race to the top is in fact advisable, practical, or even desirable for your robot and team is a whole other matter. Resource sets, integration with the rest of the robot, ability to work the fabrication process into a build season, factors of safety and how far you want to go with them on the most important robot subsystem, ease of sourcing appropriate materials, and so on are all valid considerations, much moreso than squeezing the last couple tenths of pounds out of the drivetrain. My team does sheet metal drives and plans to continue to do so for a number of reasons, but pursuit of absolutely optimal strength/weight ratio is not of of them. I'm sure 971 has similar reasons. If you want to learn more about the complex ways in which sheet metal parts can interact to add strength to a chassis, I suggest checking out some of 971's drive bases. Some very impressive work.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

I would have to disagree with you on this portion as in every building that bares weight or hold things together is either I beam or [, etc. never have I seen a square metal tube used for holding up a floor or a roof or a a building, why? because it's unnecessary weight when an I beam can bare nearly the same load. also if you have ever seen a tower-crane, they do not use a solid tube rather they use scaled up version of sheetmetal that uses webbing to give it it's strength/rigidity and it's light weight ( for heavy machinery at least) this principle also applies to sheet metal as well. "available in a more weight-efficient manner than sheet metal does," from this i'm gathering that you are saying tubing is lighter then sheet metal? (correct me if I'm wrong on this) if you are indeed saying this then i would have to disagree with you as our robot using extruded tubing this year/every year has a much heaver weight to it, then sheet metal frame (according to CAD)

as for ease of fabricating, I would agree with you in saying that it is much more time consuming if you don't have a laser/water cutter or CNC machine, and even if you do it still would take much more time then extruded tubing, that much i do not disagree with you on.

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

False. I beams in this application are used because they are easier to produce than hollow profiles. It has to do with the extrusion process, a hollow tube requires an extra die for the middle section. Even disregarding price, square or rectangular tubing is much stronger. There is more material, and it's on the periphery instead of the middle yielding a much stronger beam.

-Adrian

Re: Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel
 

You might want to ask your father why he uses I-beam and channel and if he (an other Civil Engineers and Architects) uses other profiles. The industrial buildings that I work in (manufacturer of large electrical equipment) have all sorts of square, rectangular and round steel tube, as well as I-beams, being used as pillars to support the roof structures. This complex of buildings has been expanded at least 4-6 times over the last 30 years.

You can only compare the weight of your robot built from tubing to a sheet metal one designed to same specification if both designs have been optimized properly for the stresses that they will experience and to minimize weight. I suspect that this optimization exercise is beyond the capabilities of most FRC teams since it would involve using tools such as finite element analysis and a very thorough modeling of the stresses that will be experienced by the structure. While you know your robot made from tubing was overweight, you do not know if your sheet metal CAD design is strong enough since, I presume, it was never built.


The "strength" of a square, rectangular or round tube is also different from an open profile such as an I-beam or channel. My empirical experience has been that the tubes, in general, resist torque much better than the open profiles. This characteristic may be more important in FRC robots than the ability of a particular profile to support a static load. Perhaps someone with the appropriate background can offer their comments (I am just an EE but I have had to deal with mechanical issues a number of times over the last 30+ years).