[philso]

Originally Posted by Mike Schreiber

Applying a 10 Nm load to a 50 mm diameter circular section x 100 mm long x 2mm thick yields the following:

Closed Section:
Theta = .01 degrees

Open Section:
Theta = 5.26 degrees

Thanks, Mike.

Originally Posted by IKE

In FRC, I have observed equally awesome chassis design using plate and spacer, sheet metal, and stick/tube frame, and hybrid.

I have noticed many similar (often heated) debates in other fields regarding which particular material or construction method is superior. In the end, it is often the quality of the design and the quality of the execution that makes more difference in the performance of the end product.

Originally Posted by IKE

I will say a lot of very good teams use a slowly evolving chassis design from year to year, and thus optimize their design a little bit better. This gives them a "proven" platform to support the most basic need for most games "move". I believe/suspect that this allows them to spend more time/talent on end effector and manipulator development as they are not consistently re-inventing the wheel.

Other teams re-invent the drive base each year, but this does come at a heavy design resources cost.

Ultimately a well thought out XXX design that the team has had success with will usually be out poorly developed "superior construction method" chassis that has little development time on it.

I think the Kitbot on Steroids concept was developed for this reason.