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Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri
We have been using this tank tread/wood chassis for a few years now, and it has never let us down. We opt to keep it for a few reasons.
1) Plywood is much cheaper and easier to work with than aluminum. We can assemble the entire chassis in one day on readily available machines. We also like the plywood because we have tested it to be not only lighter, but stronger than its aluminum counter part.
2) Why reinvent the wheel? This design is proven, and we know we can depend on it to work again. Plus, every year we can tweak the design to bring it closer to perfection.
3) By knowing a general chassis and drive wheel design from the start, we have more time to focus on whatever armeture we want to put on.
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LONG LIVE THE PLYWOOD BOTS. RAGE also has been using plywood for about the past 7 or so years. We also use Baltic birch, and we have only ever had it break once, in 2003, but luckily a little wood glue fixes that, instead of tearing apart the whole bot.
This is basically our philosophy as well, we usually keep the same red plywood base design from year to year, allowing us time to work on our arm and programming.