Quote:
Originally Posted by TikiTech
We went to a 6 wheel WCD this year and are very happy with the results.
Now that VexPro and West Coast Products produce easy to incorporate parts for west coast drives, just about any team can upgrade.
You can use the Versa rails and Versa blocks to create the drive rails. In fact you can get everything for a WCD from VexPro and West Coast Products.
We did not use the Versa rails as they are, in my opinion, not strong enough for this year’s game. You can make your own frame rails very easily with just a good drill. The VersaBlocks center the bearings and create the offset by their orientation so perfectly drilling the rail is not required. Just a hole big enough for the axles to fit through. Normally the offset is about 1/8" between the center and outer wheels. If you center your weight you will have no issues with turning with all traction wheels.
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Few people realize how revolutionary these blocks and the whole Versa system are for drivetrain design. You can literally buy a WCD off the shelf, with a lot of features designed for easy customization and to be really easy for low resource teams to use.
By the way, we used .0625" 6061 2x1 this year in a standard WCD and in the rest of our frame. No bending, breaks, cracks in the powdercoat, etc. They are behind strong full perimeter bumpers, but nothing that the average team couldn't create. Even for a game like Arial Assault, the VP tubing is more than thick enough. IMO, you can go thinner (like we did) and save a ton of weight without running into strength problems. We had a sub-10lb frame, all because we used 1/16" tubing everywhere and relied on strong geometry rather than tubing to make our frame robust.