Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Waegelin
An addendum on the #25 versus #35 question: I consider myself to be a pretty experienced designer, but I will ALWAYS use #35 for drivetrains. It doesn't matter how well you can CAD a drive base, if your fabrication tolerances are not tight enough, you WILL have problems with #25. I will take the reliability and forgiveness of #35 over the weight savings any day. I've seen too many #25 systems fail due to misalignment to do it any other way.
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Team 418, Purple haze has been using #25 chain for 5+ years and never had any failure in the chain itself. we have very limited machining and fabrication capabilities, limiting to a manual lathe, chop saw, band saw, and drill press. it really is not difficult to construct a functioning drive train with those tools and a large Tsquare. not only that but since before 2007 they had 3/4" plywood bases with aluminum pillow blocks (made form box alum wit ha band saw and drill press) and bearings from mcmaster.
honestly there is little trouble from #25 chain besides tension, and there are plenty of easy solutions to tensioning the stuff, that require little more than a idler sprocket or delrin or something like that, and you probably wont need to tension that chain more than once, unless you go to multiple regionals and nationals and i double that many rookies are doing ALL of that. in other words #25 is perfectly sufficient for the purposes of a FIRST rookie team, and allows that extra 5 lbs to go towards something else more deserving