Kit Chassis

[da johnny boy]

I need some help on deciding on what to do with our kit chassis. We have our robot base running and are working on our manipulator prototypes right now. We have not decided whether we will have a long or wide chassis, but I am pushing for a wide chassis.

Is whether it is worth it for our team as a rookie team, to build a custom chassis? If we did I would thing we would make a box frame like two Kit frames on top of each to strengthen the chassis. We have a mentor who can weld aluminum for us, and some of my classmates could come up with a design easily in CAD. But I don't think whatever chassis we come up with would be that beneficial as a team with years of experience. Because we are not doing a different type of drive like a swerve drive, there seems like there is not much benefit. We could lose a couple of pounds from various fasteners, I don't know what else. Also, if we have to make a hole in the front for the ball retrieval mechanism, the custom frame could have better reinforcements built in. And it seems that there is not much weight saving from 5052 aluminum to the 6061 1in square tubing with 1/8in walls. We do have several spare hands though, so I could assign the chassis team to work on a new chassis rather than working on the prototypes of the manipulator. Or we could just have our mentor weld the Kit Chassis.