pic: Team230 Damaged Frame Rail

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Thayer McCollum

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4...Q3RxV Wo2QTVJ

So I'm wondering if more teams do this? ^^ It's hard to tell from the picture but we welded thick wall aluminum tube (can't remember exact thickness) into the rail and then machined the weld flat and used a boring bar to achieve the diameter we wanted for the bearing. I feel like this would have prevented the damage to the rail in the original picture. What are your thoughts? Why don't other teams do this? Is it unnecessary? Do I just have no idea what I'm talking about? I am very curious.

Teams usually use 1/8" wall aluminum tubing for their drive rails, which prevents the problem. Some teams use bearing blocks or shims to provide even more material support to the bearing than the 1/8" wall tubing, which is safer. It's quite uncommon to use 1/16" wall tubing for drive rails at all, and I generally think it's not worth the weight savings to do so.

Your solution is essentially a welded-in bearing block, which seems overkill, especially compared to the various other bearing block solutions teams can come up with that aren't so tricky to machine and install. It'll work, but there are better uses of your time, and it'd be better to just not use 1/16" tubing for supporting bearings directly.