6 Wheel Drive, Wheel/Drive Assembly

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Pulturded fiberglass is beastly for FIRST. Main problem is it weighs a lot, but you can be shockingly liberal with lightening and it will still hold strong. 2791 used it this year to make a bumper frame for roughly 7 pounds. It's great because you can machine them in any school wood shop, and pultruded fiberglass already has some convenient flanges for structure. 1726 has used it for a cantilevered dead axle 6wd before and it seemed to work for them; their bases are a little heavy but they don't tip! I might make some pultruded fiberglass CAD now...

In many applications you may prefer bent aluminium though. We replaced a lot of square fiberglass tubing with kitbot c-channel and saved a lot of weight.

This post raised a very good point. The trend seems to be to make your base as lightweight as possible. The upsides to this are obvious but the major downside is that it may mean your CG is higher in the air. This doesn't mean you want a 90lb drive train but is just meant as a warning to check where your CG will be. A good drive train is only useful when it has wheels on the ground.


Where does 1771 source its baltic birch? Is it a local supplier or is it online? Ive been wanting to price it out to see if some projects would be cheaper using wood. (Plus, they would look nice imho)

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Where does 1771 source its baltic birch? Is it a local supplier or is it online? Ive been wanting to price it out to see if some projects would be cheaper using wood. (Plus, they would look nice imho)

It is definitely cheaper than aluminum. We buy it from a local lumber yard and I believe its about $30 for a 5'x5' sheet of 12mm ply. Be sure to get true baltic birch as there is some birch ply that uses softwood for the filler layers.