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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Lacking the fabrication support necessary for the above, 57 has settled on the kit frame with a chassis of 1"x1"x1/16" wall square aluminum tube, mostly held together with more 1/16" sheet plates riveted with 3/16" aluminum structural rivets. It's pretty lightweight, plenty strong if you're not dropping your robot off a cliff, and we can get 20' sticks of the stuff for $6 from a local supplier, even on a Saturday. Which is harder to say about AM channel or 80/20 or another T-slot extruded aluminum.

Do you have any advice or books/white papers/etc to recommend concerning designing for 1/16" tube? We're pretty much all 1/8" tube or angle for everything on our bots. I've heard great things about 1/16", but we've warped welded 1/8" chassis occasionally so there's some hesitancy.

Price:
From what I've found it's really very, very location-based. We used to buy everything from McMaster until we discovered the joy of local surplus stores. If you think you might be missing something, introduce yourself to a local machining company or two (or ten). They'll know. Different profiles definitely offer a lot more design flexibility. Certainly I'd think 1/8" C-channel on the tower is over-designed. Maybe angle if you want to stay with 1/8".