Sheet Metal Fabrication vs. Using Channel

[TheModMaster8]

NOTE: the COM in my profile picture

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

I'll challenge you on that.

The vast majority of sheet metal is done with 5052-H32 alloy aluminum due to how easy it is to bend. This ease of bending comes at a strength cost. (Matweb reports 13 ksi for 5052 and 40 ksi for 6061-T6). More material is then required to make the sheet metal design strong. I'd be very surprised if you could make a sheet metal drive base that is as strong and light as a well designed tube stock drive base (and I've designed a number of sheet bases).

I accept you challenge.

you may be correct in the pressure needed to distort the metal (I don't have SolidWorks on this computer so i can't check) though this is when the metal is still in it's flatted form, my Dad is a civil engineer and I've asked him on shapes that would bare loads of weight, if you ever see a 'I' beam holding up a floor or roof you can see that vary little metal is required to hold a lot of weight, this is due to the form it had ( |-| ) <-- shape of an I-Beam) The flat side of this beam give the middle layer it's required strange as it distributes the force being applied to it, the same goes for sheetmetal,


if i have my flat piece of metal and apply said amount of force what i would get would be a traditional bend, how ever if i took that flat piece of metal and Bent bother sides so that it was making an ( [ ) form, and now tried to bend it with the same amount of force, you would see that the metal would no longer bend due to the extra support given off by the two linear walls, this is why support beams are in shapes of U's, I's, T's and L's, also triangles (but thats a completely different level of supports) if i remember correctly 9 so don't take this last part as fact... i believe it requires the for needed to bend the flat plate plus the force required to bend the two walls hight wise. all in all it is definitely a much more rigid way of making a robot base And this time it's 3:27 AM!!