Drivetrain Critiques

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant...285&top_cat=60
I'm not sure how oversized these come, I don't know what tolerances the hold from flat to flat.

Had a question - why the garolite if you have a waterjet sponsor?

A sponsor isn't an unlimited resource. We've run both garolite and waterjetted pans on multiple robots. I honestly couldn't say one performs better (the waterjet is stronger, and is certainly cooler. Can't say that extra strength is truly necessary tough). I know for sure that the waterjetted pan is 10x the resource and cost investment at least.

So a waterjetted bellypan is a huge resource dump for minimal competitive gain, and if that same amount of sponsor time was invested in making parts for other system it would be far more useful (a waterjetted bellypan easily equates to the gearbox for every system on the robot in most cases, plus several sets of spares).


To elaborate more on the differences. G-10/fr4 is what we use, which is primo grade garolite. Mcmaster has it in 1/16" which is what we routinely order. It's hard to directly compare a solid composite pan to a pocketed aluminum pan in strength, but the more I think the more I'm pretty sure they are comparable in strength. We've run both on multiple projects, and the garolite is actually stiffer with less sag/deflection under load.