pic: Team 3647 West Coast Drive

[AdamHeard]

I always like seeing a quality base come together, especially with someone so willing and immediate at/to implement suggested changes.

The corner gussets could be 1/16" if you wanted to save some weight, but 1/8" certainly isn't too heavy and is easier to sell to doubting team members.

Definitly change the bolts on those gussets to rivets.

Incorporate from the get go a very rigid bellypan (as you have no internal crossmembers). Metal is nice but can be heavy unless very thing or heavily pocketed. I'd reccomend g-10/fr4 garolite from mcmaster for a VERY strong and light material that also happens to come in glossy black.

I like the changes you made to the gearbox mounting.

Can we get a close up and/or section view of the outer wheel/shaft/bearing block setup? There is a LOT that can be done right/wrong there that really make or break such a system.

On the same note, what are your plans for tensioning?

The reason the gearboxes are somewhat weakly mounted is if you view them completely from the front/back of the robot. They create a moment tryign to peel them off from teh frame, and you only have bolts at one elevation to react this. You really want bolts at two different heights (it deosn't have to be much) to react this. Our bolts are only .75" apart vertically and hold up just fine.

Ditto earlier comments about #10-32's being adequate, our entire drive uses nothing but.

Keep working guys! Very exciting to see, and you're on your way to a very nice drive.