pic: 3647 Frame

[Mk.32]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I'm a believer in the standardized bolt pattern and we did them with hand drawn lines and a cheap drill press. One of my students did 1700 holes over a 3 day weekend. I tried to get her help but she said it would be faster if she drilled everyone and just had other team members mark them for her. We hand cut the gussets on a band saw and drilled them with printed templates.

Some of the bars can be seen in this post.

We ended up needing the holes very often for design changes. We added a separate section to our ball elevator in about an hour because we already had all the holes ready. I'd really like to see more teams use this construction method.

Are you using all 1/8" or is most of that 1/16"? We did all 1/16" and only had a few poles bend due to ramming into the bridges but otherwise it worked out perfectly.

Wow.. I can't even think about doing all those holes by hand...... #SpoiledByCNC

The 2x1 is all 1/8th and the rest of the structure is a mix depending on what joints require more strength, we did have some bending issues with 1/16th last year and the bridge as well.