Best Drivetrain

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally Posted by roboticWanderor

Team 418, Purple haze has been using #25 chain for 5+ years and never had any failure in the chain itself. we have very limited machining and fabrication capabilities, limiting to a manual lathe, chop saw, band saw, and drill press. it really is not difficult to construct a functioning drive train with those tools and a large Tsquare. not only that but since before 2007 they had 3/4" plywood bases with aluminum pillow blocks (made form box alum wit ha band saw and drill press) and bearings from mcmaster.
honestly there is little trouble from #25 chain besides tension, and there are plenty of easy solutions to tensioning the stuff, that require little more than a idler sprocket or delrin or something like that, and you probably wont need to tension that chain more than once, unless you go to multiple regionals and nationals and i double that many rookies are doing ALL of that. in other words #25 is perfectly sufficient for the purposes of a FIRST rookie team, and allows that extra 5 lbs to go towards something else more deserving

Often the key to meeting proper tolerances is not the equipment, but rather the people using it. If you have experienced people using basic manual tools, they will produce good results. If you're involving high school students with minimal experience in your build process, sometimes those tolerances don't end up quite as tight as you would like. I'd rather just use #35, and then not have to worry about it.