[EricH]

Originally Posted by J_Miles

Just because you can make it in CAD doesn't mean it can be manufactured (or that it would be sensible/economical to do. (i.e. Would building this chassis require an insane amount of wasted metal?))

Exactly. I have seen parts in CAD that would be impossible to build without one particular piece of equipment.

Here is what I'm seeing that is probably a waste of material, and what I'd do about it:

--Those two solid (endcapped?) cross-beams. You don't need the ends on there; go ahead and remove them (they'll be a REAL pain, even with sheet metal). Better yet, replace them with a bellypan and some much lighter angled upper crossmembers. If you do need only upper crossmembers, then make them as small and light as you can get away with--and probably not a full tube, unless that were to make some other aspect of the design easier.

--It looks like you have a solid sheet area below the rear cross-beam; that could probably be removed. Ditto for part of the front that looks quite similar.

--No light-weighting. Yes, this is sheet metal--but you can still remove quite a bit of material on the sides of the robot. Triangles are your friend.

Essentially, what I'm seeing is that you could use some studying in the direction of how to effectively use sheet metal. I don't have a lot of experience myself, but the one thing that I keep hearing is "flanges" are what give sheet metal its strength--you've got flanges, all right, but you also have a lot of material that probably isn't contributing a whole lot to the structural integrity of the drivebase.