pic: Monocoque Treads

[AndyB]

I'm not 100% sure on that. I found the cad file of the design and noticed that the wall thickness was .1in, but that's hardly accurate. In a design like this, I'd probably use .08-.09" for 6061 aluminum or .03-.05" for some sort of galvanized steel. I'd probably use sheet steel just because it's readily available to us.

I've never actually worked with sheet steel within FIRST robotics. I tried doing some research on it but couldn't find much in terms of second hand experience. I've used chromoly steel back when I was with 269 but the properties of chromoly extrusion and galvanized sheet steel are probably pretty different as well. I've heard the number 3x the weight/strength when compared to aluminum but I have no clue if that's correct or not. It was with chromoly extrusion compared to aluminum extrusion which is why we could use .035" wall thickness extrusion.

So to answer your question Akash, .08-.09" Aluminum or .03-.05" Steel.

Something interesting to point out now that I'm looking at the design more up close is how the rollers are set up. There are no crossbars inside the tread modules to add support. At least not any supports designed solely as crossbars... the axles for each roller are dead and the UHMW or UDPE rollers spin freely on them. This way, the roller acts as a crossbar support as well.