Chassis
Some of you said that polycarb was brittle and or shatterd easily, those people are confuseing polycarbonate(aka lexan) with acrylic. Acrylic is very brittle, which was best demonstrated at the seatle regional when a team had a scoop made out of acrylic and the opposing alliance threw a ball into play, and it hit the scoop, the scoop shattered. Polycarb on the other hand is extremly tough in fact it is used instead of plate glass in prisons and things of that nature. I saw a demo of polycarb on TV where they invited members of the LA SWAT team to try and break the stuff. The SWAT team tried to break it with sledges, axes, pipes, and crowbars and failed miserably. So they came back with their automatic weapons and fired on the stuff with MP5 sub-mchine guns (NO JOKE) and the polycarb stopped every bulleto a full 30-round mag!! So polycarb(aka lexan) is extremely tough and has no problem holding up to any and all FIRST applications.
My team used extruded aluminum for our base in the form of a "c" shaped structure which was temporaily bolted together for testing and then was TIG welded at the end of testing. Then we built up from there with alum. angle. Then a plywood base to mount ball gathering mechanism and electronics. Why did we use plywood you may ask, because it as avalible and it is so much easier to work with then metal will ever be. Even though it is ugly as can be. On top of the plywood we used alum angle for the ball hopper which filled out the maximum allowed space.
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