Round Belting - Solid vs. Hollow, Polycord vs. McMaster

[dtengineering]

I was admiring some of the robots in the 2006 "Behind the Design" book, and noticed that round belting was commonly used in some of the nicer ball handling mechanisms. Team 121 specifically referred to using Polycord belting material.

Searching back through CD (yes... I do search before I post!) I found this thread as the best reference but it was a bit out of date and didn't quite answer the questions I had, so:

1) McMaster Lists both solid core (you join it by welding the ends) and hollow core (you use a barbed insert) round belting material. The hollow costs a little more, but should be easier to join. There is a welding kit for the solid stuff, but it is expensive, and it should be possible to rig something similar at home. Does anyone have sufficient experience with both the solid and hollow core belt to recommend one over the other? Is it as easy to rig up a welding set up for the solid core stuff as it looks like it should be?

2) The McMaster belt material runs about $1.00/ft (more for hollow, less for solid) in the 1/4" size. Smallparts.com lists similar sized Polycord for $4.20/ft (when buying 10 foot lengths). Has anyone experimented with this enough to compare it to McMaster's offerings?

Thanks,

Jason

Incidentally, if you're stuck for ideas on how to play this year's game, you could do worse than read the Behind the Design book. There are some great ball-handling ideas in there.