pic: Team 935 Chassis Teaser

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I am going to be a bit controversial and say that while the chassis is a work of art in many ways, I wouldn't trade it for the chassis that our team is building with little more than hand tools, standard C sections from McMaster and about 2 hours of mill time poking in a few critically placed (and large diameter) holes.

Every team has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Teams should play to their strengths but I fear that some teams use certain technologies on their robot mostly because they have access to it (e.g. a CNC mill) rather than because it it the best technology to use.

A contrarian view presented for your consideration. Please believe me that it is not intended to in a mean spirit and that no offense is intended.

Joe J.

I love this point of view, mostly because it is similar to my view on the matter. I have friends on other teams who love using their CNC equipment even when they probably don't need to to cut weight or make a part quickly/precisely. I also have friends on other teams who have amazing facilities, but limit themselves to what they actually want to get machined.
We are similar to the latter example. We have pretty great resources and fabrication available, but its usually just used for very crucial components that must be machined in a way we can't do on our manuals. During the design process, we also try to avoid heavy machining or CNCing parts while drawing the parts in CAD.
An example of our machining resources - http://kozakproducts.com/facilities.html http://www.gpsheetmetal.com/index.html

I may open a new thread for this type of discussion. Or, Dr. Joe, if you would like to start one I would be interested in reading what others have to say.

The frame you guys have looks really sick. I look forward to seeing how our mentored team 2395 does with/against you at OKC regional!