Need Help With Sheet Metal Designing

[BBray_T1296]

Our team uses aluminum 1" box tubing for our frame, which we temporarily attach somehow (I dont remember?) before having our sponsor (one of their employee's who does nothing but weld aluminum all day) weld it all up nice. This year's frame was far too complex, but it came in at just 13lbs and is stupidly strong (could probably withstand 1,000s of lbs of force in any direction). It also is easy to work with, has nearly infinite practical durability and is very rugged. We subsidize this tubing with sheetmetal for more robot subsystems (shooter, drivetrain assemblies, ramp lowerers, innertube grabbers).

We typically use 1/8" alum (powder-coated of course) for heavy systems like drive train and climbing brackets, and 1/16"-.0404" for shooters and such. We used .0202" (basically IS paper) in 2011 on our gripper because if it got banged up, it was super easy to hand-bend back into shape.