Standard vs. Custom Frame

[Cody Carey]

Originally Posted by Viper37

Disingenuous from your point of view, not my own. Save the rhetoric.

The kit bot material is weak. Wack 2 pieces togeather and note the fat chunk of aluminum missing. That is what happens to low quality aluminum stock such as what we are provided with.

On another note, last year bumpers were few and far between, seeing as just about everyone couldnt make it up the ramp with bumpers.

Im not saying this on baseless grounds. Pleanty of people agree with me.

Ok... The Idea of the kitbot frame being weak is something that I had to batter out of my teammates' collective heads when it first came out. The arguments came up of weight, strength, and versatility in designing additional components. Weight was no problem, we just took a 2' length of extruded and a 2' length of kitbot rail and weighed them... even though the kitbot was slightly heavier, the difference was so slight that it didn't matter. Strength was a little harder, and after thinking it over, we decided to test this by smashing samples of both materials in an Arbor press. The Kitbot rail performed exceedingly well. After a little discussion about the ease of adding functional modules to the evenly spaced holes in the kitbot frame, we decided to go for it. We liked the way it held up the first year, and decided to use it again last year.

Last year, we were one of the most physical teams on the field, and the kitbot frame stood up to everything we could throw at it: High speed collisions, 5 robot pile-ups, everything. All with no bumpers and a removed front rail... with the default configuration. The frame is still as structurally sound as the day we shipped it.

The only problem we've had so far, is that the middle axle hole in the frame oblongs and causes drive-chain issues. We only noticed this last year, after two regionals (one of which we won), championships, and an off-season comp.
I believe that signs of wear can and should be expected after the battering we put it through in those four competitions.

And as for This comment:

Originally Posted by Viper37

You must not get very far then.

2 years running we have used the kitbot frame. 2 years running the front and rear are badly smashed in.


Time to get our brand new TIG/CNC Aluminum frame from HP's machine shop!

We won the Philly regional last year.



I did not write this post on baseless grounds, either. I wrote it on two years of experience with the kitbot frame.