Complete bumper support?

[May_Walter]

Hi there, we were wondering about the bumper rules this year - our chassis is only 1/10" high, and we want to add an L profile to mount the bumper.
Our question is - is there anything specifying exactly how much of the bumper's height has to be supported? does it have to support the entire 5" segment? and how far apart must those mounting brackets be?

thanks in advance
Team Artemis #3083

[missledojer217]

Yes they do have to have 5in of board and they just have to be secure.(to the ref.)

[372 lives on]

if your chassis is that low to the ground are you planning on not even trying to use either the bridge or go over the barrier?
And you will have difficulty just getting onto the top of the key(i believe it is more then 1/10in rise from the carpet)

I see no benefit to have it so LOW and unless you have a REALLY REALLY amazing reason, I would suggest raising your frame chasis to at least 1 in

[Justin Stiltner]

Take a look at R33 of the manual, that is the rule that most directly applies to what you want to do. I have never seen a requirement of how much of the height of the bumper must be supported, likely the "must be securely mounted" would come into play here.

If you want to be sure about not encountering a problem, I encourage you to build a square(or whatever shape your chassis is) of material behind the bumpers with at least some elements supporting half of the height of the bumper. This does not guarantee you will not have issues in inspection, but will likely pass, and will not hurt you if you are not close on weight.

As a piece of advice from someone that has been doing this for a while, unless you have an EXTREMELY good reason for having your frame that low, raise the lowest point of your robot up some, at least to 1". This is not battle bots, you do not need to worry about other robots getting under you and flipping you. With only .1" clearance you will snag yourself on the carpet any time you are near the field boarders (metal pieces of the boarder extend under the carpet and cause a bump there of 3/16" height depending on the field, and you will likely not be able to go up the ramp.

Good Luck