[AdamHeard]

The holes are something I invented a while back to irritate the kids use as a standard mount. It's a #7 (.201) Hole on a 1/2" hole pattern. It actually hasn't been used much so far, as we got close on weight we started welding things on (and haven't had many last minute additions) along with the fact that because the kids were whining, we didn't do every face, so we mounted to some faces lacking holes. #7's are great as they are a #10 bolt clearance, tap size for a 1/4-20 and work fine with normal 3/16" rivits.

Some were done on a drill press with a jig, some were done on a manual mill.

If it were done for weight, it wouldn't be worth it, as each .201 diameter by 1/16" long disk removed must be extremely light. .0002 pounds actually.

As for the RC car tires, we use 28 on the intake, 14 per pulley, and an additional 14 on the exhaust pulley that touches the hopper. With the 6 in drive, that's 48 "wheels".

We never actually bought precision shaft, just ended up using rod and polishing it.

We haven't noticed any ABS fatigue, and the intake pulley doesn't bend at all in that picture, probably an artifact of the cropping in photoshop. There is a 1" OD, 1/8" wall 6061 tube running down the center of him that does a pretty good job of keeping him straight. However, any pulleys without such a sleeve put under high tension do bend, so most pulleys on the competition robot have at least a 1/32" wall thick sleeve.

Thanks for all the kind words.