well just to scare you i'll tell you that my team snapped our #25 chain when ever we really needed it to work. We put a lot of power into our drive train. We pushed up on the goal so we had a robot that effectivly weighed 220 pounds. Then combine that with the drills in low on a gear down the chain popped consisitently. It was unfortunate because we were the strongest robot easily at our regional(despite us not knowing that because it always broke.) We'll this year we're getting back at small parts for never shipping those 3/8ths inch sprockets and chain by using MSC only. (they still haven't come.... WERE WAITING!)
Second this year on our arm we really need to use 3/8ths in chain for controlling it. Its 9 feet long fully exteneded and weighs quite a bit. With a moment of about 110 to 1 its pretty tough on the chain. normally it puts about 910 pounds of force on the chain but if the arm gets hit that could easily spike and break the chain.
Of course our silly drivetrain designers used the 3/8ths chain in the stupidest place(rotating our drive modules) with sprockets that are reverersed!!(so its about ummm... 8 times as fast as it should be). Hopefully tomorrow i can bug them into changing it.... the 6 sprockets and 10 feet of chain easily could save us 5 pounds if they were in 1/4 inch.
so in conclusion.... you probably could break your chain, but i wouldn't worry... nobody else seems to have problems.
P.S. Anybody got a solution to a chain where the its half an offset llink off? (as in a quarter link off)
And your other point, "why a debate over a nonexistent rule?". Its summer, we're not building robots, and we're geeks. What else are we supposed to do? - EHaskins [more] 
Similar Threads
Hybrid Mode
