pic: 1899 Saints Robotics Plywood Drivetrain

[z_beeblebrox]

Looks really neat!

As someone who's been spending a lot of time designing plywood robots, I have a few questions:

-About how much does this chassis weigh?

-What thickness of plywood are you using?

-Why are you using such big wheels?

-How are your gearboxes mounted? Do you have prior experience mounting gearboxes like that?

-Why is the chassis glued rather than bolted? How will you repair it if you can't remove individual pieces of wood?

-Next to the gearboxes, it looks like the frame rail is covered by another set of plates that extend to the end. Why is that?

-Does the belly pan extend to the outer frame rails? It would give the chassis a lot of strength if it did, although it might make access to the wheels and chains harder. It might also make sense to cut out the belly pan below the gearboxes so they are accessible from the bottom.

Edit: the image in the above post isn't showing up. Here's the link to the image.

Edit 2: Just saw the description. The whole parametric thing is really cool. We did a very similar thing on our offseason drivetrain. Why did the 2014 chassis have problems with chains? We've found this construction method extremely stiff.