Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
Honestly, build season is so quick and I'm so busy that I'd rather just over-build the mechanism a little bit and go conservative with the pocketing than do rigorous analysis to optimize the part for weight. The few extra ounces this saves is rarely worth the design time. If you have a general understanding of trusses, how your mechanism is loaded, etc. and you are conservative with your pocketing you should be okay.
It's very easy to misuse FEA tools to give you a false sense of confidence, so I would be careful with them.
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Agreed.
FRC pocketing is something I heavily rely on anecdotal experience for (and occasionally remaking parts lighter or stronger in rev 2).
Even if you application of FEA is perfect, it'd be very difficult to quantify the forces involved if the part is exposed to impacts or the dynamic reactions of attached mechanisms. This pretty much just leaves small internal gearboxes that don't take much load other than their internal torques (which don't need much plate strength at all) that are easy to analyze.
I've used FEA in FRC some for A-B comparison of methods combined with anecdotal experience, but I've never determined strength required in a given plate/gusset then FEA'd to drive the pocketing to match.