Sheet Metal, 8-Wheel Drive Design

[Madison]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

In the attachment below, I quickly drew up a set of chassis rails (looking at the robot from the front). The left side shows the configuration used by the original poster. In this configuration the height of the rails is determined by the height of the gearbox to avoid having to remove a section of the flange. The right shows the flange flipped the other way. Doing this allows height of the rails to be independent of transmission, and allows the mounting of a tower to the internal surface, while retaining a full flange.

There are many ways to configure the rails, our most recent concept has the outer c rail flipped as well. You can see some of FRC2168s cad development as well as some of our past designs by reading my blog (click my name in my signature).

Please let me know if this needs further discussion.

Thanks; that is was I suspected you might've meant, but wanted to be sure. I think that I'd likely mount structure to the drive by sitting it atop the flanges rather than by abutting the inside face, so it hadn't occurred to me that the flange might get in the way.