Quote:
Originally Posted by pfreivald
Interesting... We use 1/8" wall square tube on a kitbot frame, and every year it seems like we bend or break at least one piece of it tubing -- making us leery of going any thinner. (Also, there's no such thing as a "local supplier" in Naples, NY... Unless you need a cow, STAT.)
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We used to go with all 1/8" wall as well. We eventually tired of being constantly overweight with frames that took up a distressingly large percentage of our weight allowance. Yes, they would probably fare well in a head-on collision with a small motorcycle, but that's obviously a bit overdesigned for most FRC games. Our biggest problem was that we usually ended up using the 1/8" in various locations for motor mounting bars, etc. Places that didn't need anything near as strong as 1/8".
So, we build of the kit frame, and figure on that taking any big impact loads. Anywhere we're not expecting to get hit gets the 1/16", and we look at using 1/8" if we're likely to be hit hard and often somewhere.
Although, this reminds me of the single biggest problem of using 1/16" wall tubing. If you're mounting something by bolting through the tubing, you need to be cautious about over-tightening your bolt, or you'll squish and deform your tube distressingly easily. We're constantly reining in the gorillas on the team that have a bad habit of severely over-tightening bolts and such.