[Tristan Lall]

Given you mentioned fabricating it in the preseason, can I assume that this is something you'd like to see mass-produced and made available to teams through retail or KOP channels (e.g. as a future kit frame)? (If you're only planning to build them for your own team's consumption, then this advice may not apply.)

It's a neat idea, and it's got great potential for modularity. I think that you're looking at a lot of cost in fabricating it, relative to a kitbot.

The huge advantage of the last two kit frames was the ability to punch and bend them using sheet metal equipment. The raw material is relatively cheap, and provided you're sourcing them from a shop with significant investments in turret punches and brake presses, they're reasonably cheap to fabricate in mass production quantities too.

The problem with this design is the need for a lot of CNC setups to drill all four faces individually. (Well, you could do it manually, but that's obviously a ton of work; not a production solution unless you can get the cost of labour way down.) So for mass production on the scale of a kitbot, I would encourage you to think of other ways that a roughly equivalent part could be made. Maybe you could get away with C-channel made from punched and bent sheet metal (like the old kit frames, but a larger section). It wouldn't be difficult to rivet in a few smaller stiffening braces on the open side to carry the inner bearings, for example.

The universal mounting for the bearings is nice. But as you're CNCing them anyway, maybe you'd want to consider some more hole locations for intermediate settings. That way you could be a bit more flexible in using them as tensioners. Or if you want to get a little crazy, make them in two pieces: one sets the ground clearance for raised or lowered wheels, and the other one has some sort of pattern that allows you to rivet the wheels in place in a couple positions, e.g. on centre, or plus or minus 0.125 in to compensate for chain centre distance.