pic: West coast drive design

[Hawiian Cadder]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

He's got a valid point, it just took him a few posts to get around to it.

Yes, we avoid 1/16" wall on our rails for drive that have bearing blocks, etc...

We're pretty sure it'd work, but for a base that's already around 30 lbs with motors, we take the few extra pounds that just two rails of 1/8" represent.

I was never suggesting making the cross-members 1/8, but 1/16 tends to bend around where you attach other stuff to it that will experience a lot of force. My fault, I should be more clear.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Can we not make claims about robot strength or material thickness based purely on guesswork please? Seriously, if you have no experience with the material, there's no shame in just not posting.

If I don't have experience with what is being discussed in a thread I don't post anything. We used 1/16 and 1/8 tube this year on various parts of our robot, and the 1/8 turned out to be overkill on the members that did not have axles or the tower bolted on. In the members with axles or the tower bolts, we should have used more washers to prevent the tubes bending. The 1/16 was about perfect where we used it.