Broken Belt

[dtengineering]

Don't forget that chains fail sometimes, too. We use #35 chain in the drive, and while the chain has rarely suffered a physical failure, the sprockets come loose, things (loose carpet strands usually) get wedged between the chain and sprocket and knock the chain off, etc. Of course the nice thing about chain is that it is a bit easier to fix than a belt because you can easily break and join chains and adjust their lengths.

We've even had a sprocket break the welds joining it to the hub (in our very first year... and the very first time we got our auto mode running, too!) So chains are not inherently reliable systems... like belts they need to be designed and built correctly to provide reliable service.

FRC is a high performance application... if you build something so strong that it NEVER breaks then you have probably built it too strong and too heavy. Personally I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of weight for reliability in the drive train, but it sounds like you have come very close to optimizing the reliability/weight ratio on your drive system.

Jason