Quote:
Originally Posted by evoluti1
THIS is the most important advice. Assuming your latches/pins are strong enough, a well-integrated design will have a much bigger impact on reliability and ease of use than which particular pin you buy.
If your frame tweaks and you end up needing a hammer to get your bumpers on and off, all of a sudden you won't care that you can remove your latches in 1 second instead of 2 seconds. Be sure your frame is strong and won't permanently parallelogram or deform when you get hit. A bellypan, be it plywood, polycarbonate, or laser-cut aluminum helps a lot with this. It doesn't have to be sophisticated.
Mount bumpers such that impacts get distributed along the length of horizontal member, rather than being concentrated at attachment points. If you're running WCD, you may need to design an additional rail above your wheels to accomplish this.
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Even if you use the same attachment system that worked well for another team but left the bumper design as an afterthought, it is likely that attachment system will not work as well for you.
The ones we used this year were part of the CAD and untrained students could get a set on or off within two minutes on the first try.
The rest of Evoluti1's advice is also really good, especially when there is a lot of defense to be played.