[EricH]

Originally Posted by carpedav000

Then why NOT use it for the front/side panels? I've gotten a lot of the benefits of using plywood, but no answers as to why polycarbonate would or would not be better.

In this case, plywood takes impacts at least as well as polycarb, and is faster by far to cut and install.

Here are some more possible reasons: Wood is lighter than polycarb for the same size of piece (though it's quite possible that you might need a thicker piece). Wood is actually stiffer than polycarb--take a sheet of birch ply and a sheet of polycarb, hold at one end, shake. Wood is immune to loctite spidering... and it's a lot easier to drill without cracking if you forgot to CAD the holes for the laser.

Note: The above specifically applies to birch plywood, ideally Baltic birch plywood.


That being said, there ARE teams that build chassis out of polycarb: 1714 has been very hard to see for many years because their primary building material is polycarb (or is it acrylic? think it's polycarb). But they have to be very creative in terms of material attachment and stiffening.