Quote:
Originally Posted by Edoc'sil
How well does the fiberglass hold up? I have used it for other applications and it doesn't see to be robust enough for FIRST, but then again neither does balsa, and I have seen those bots.
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Pulturded fiberglass is beastly for FIRST. Main problem is it weighs a lot, but you can be shockingly liberal with lightening and it will still hold strong. 2791 used it this year to make a bumper frame for roughly 7 pounds. It's great because you can machine them in any school wood shop, and pultruded fiberglass already has some convenient flanges for structure. 1726 has used it for a cantilevered dead axle 6wd before and it seemed to work for them; their bases are a little heavy but they don't tip! I might make some pultruded fiberglass CAD now...
In many applications you may prefer bent aluminium though. We replaced a lot of square fiberglass tubing with kitbot c-channel and saved a lot of weight.