Quote:
Originally Posted by robokiller
for my questions:
1. how has 80/20 worked for you in the past? what profiles have you used?
2. whats the best way to CAD it, We use inventor and my work uses sketchup and Autocad with AutoQuoterX, but when I use step files from 80/20 Inventor forces me to go through fusion to get the length I want.
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1. My team has used 1x1 80/20 for as long as I've been with the team. The biggest advantage that it gives us is that we always have our robot done early due to the ease of assembly and lack of machining needed to build a robot from it. However, when using 80/20 our robots are always heavy and have flex problems.
If you look at any good robot made from 80/20 you'll see that they typically have some sort of two tier frame to overcome how flexible 80/20 is. While these robots frames are comparable in stiffness and strength to other build methods (tubing, sheet, etc...) they are much heavier.
I don't know if this thread is meant to discuss how to use 80/20, or to decide between using or not using 80/20. If its the latter, I recommend you use 80/20 for your frame only if you have extremely limited machining resources and you need construct your robot quickly and design as you go. There is no reason to use 80/20 for framing based on its performance as a frame member, it should only be used when you need its ease of assembly and lack of required machining.
2. I do everything 3d in inventor, I currently have inventor set up to use 80/20 in the frame generator. I downloaded all the 80/20 profiles I wanted of their site and made one ipart containing all the profiles, I authored that ipart as a frame member and published it to the content center. Its was a fairly irritating process that I did a long time ago and don't fully remember, if your want me to go into more detail let me know.