pic: Wood Coast Drive

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by EricH

In this case, plywood takes impacts at least as well as polycarb, and is faster by far to cut and install.

Here are some more possible reasons: Wood is lighter than polycarb for the same size of piece (though it's quite possible that you might need a thicker piece). Wood is actually stiffer than polycarb--take a sheet of birch ply and a sheet of polycarb, hold at one end, shake. Wood is immune to loctite spidering... and it's a lot easier to drill without cracking if you forgot to CAD the holes for the laser.

Note: The above specifically applies to birch plywood, ideally Baltic birch plywood.


That being said, there ARE teams that build chassis out of polycarb: 1714 has been very hard to see for many years because their primary building material is polycarb (or is it acrylic? think it's polycarb). But they have to be very creative in terms of material attachment and stiffening.

I think your mixing up polycarbonate (lexan) and acrylic (plexiglass). Polycarb is extremely impact resistant but cannot be cut on a commercial laser cutter. Acrylic is very brittle and can very easily be cut on a laser cutter.