Quote:
Originally Posted by Malm
Total weight was actually about 130 lbs. We ran out of steel tubes after that... We were pleasantly surprised by how solid the rhinos were. (Surprised is a little strong, I generally trust AndyMark to make quality products, but it was still nice to see.)
For anyone wondering, they're tied together with 4 bars of 1010 80/20 extruded aluminum, which is heavier than the REV Extrusion recommended by AndyMark. We already had the 1010 in the shop, REV Extrusion was sold out, and we didn't mind a little extra weight to have fewer worries about how solid base of the chassis was.
The sides of the Rhinos are 3/16" aluminum plate with supports every few inches and are incredibly solid, so we are not too worried about T-boning. (That said, we are planning on having full length bumpers and external frame rails to help protect them as well.)
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I think Mike is searching for its ability to spin off of a robot playing defense on it not the structural integrity. If a track drive is hit close to its center of rotation it may have issues spinning off a robot playing defense on it creating a death spin type scenario where you cannot drive forwards or backwards out of the Tbone. This results in both robots making circles locking your robot up instead of enabling it to score. A lot of wheeled Tank style robots have had this issue as well. One way to mitigate this is to use low coefficient of friction bumper materials. This decreases the amount of friction between the two surfaces that your robot is trying to slide off of. You could also think of a way to change your center of rotation by dropping an omni wheel. Remember its not a pin unless your robot is up against a field surface so in theory they could do it the whole match.