View Single Post
  #4   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 11-12-2014, 13:07
cfair cfair is offline
Registered User
AKA: Chris Fairley
None #1351 (AMHS Robotics)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Rookie Year: 2004
Location: San Jose, Ca
Posts: 17
cfair is an unknown quantity at this point
Re: pic: 2851 2014 off-season design: Bottom view with electronics

It looks like you have a sheet metal frame. We do not have sheet metal sponsors, so we've never ventured into that scary place. My first concern for you would be parallelogramming (shear) for the chassis when you get a violent hit on the corner. The welded tubular frame does pretty well against those corner hits, but it still definitely needs a shear plate. Other teams would speak with more authority on how to achieve the same thing with sheet metal, but I would start with lots of rivets on your shear plate or gussets. I see you have basically created box cross sections for the sides and end members. That's great; you just need to figure out how to connect them and resist shear.

As for the advantages: the biggest advantage of tubular is simplicity. From my point of view, the easiest chassis is an off-the-shelf chassis, the next easiest is one the sorta off the shelf (like ours: we're using versablocks), the next is a custom one using plates or tubes (what we usually do), and the most difficult is sheet metal. Just so you know, we routinely find 1/8" wall 1" square tubing bending dramatically because of hits to our front and rear bumpers .
Reply With Quote