Bellypan material and strength

[pfreivald]

If you want an easily-removable belly pan and don't want to deal with bolt heads, consider getting a thread setter, which is great for putting aluminum threads in polycarbonate and wood (as well as 1/8" metal, if you're not happy with only 1/8" of thread.)

[1493kd]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

We do rivets. I don't think we've ever had to detach a belly pan, but if you do it's just a few minutes of drilling out rivets. With our setup though we have the belt inside the tube so using lots of nuts inside the frame would be a little bit annoying.

If you want to use screws with a WCD belly pan (or really anywhere in / through square / rectangle tube) rivet nuts are probably the best option. We use rivet nuts almost everywhere except where we have to tap. I don't know if this year's robot even has a regular nut on it anywhere. Definitely worth the investment and less of a pain than PEM nuts.

Actually just got out rivet nut tool and rivet nuts in today thank to Brian suggesting it to us when we came over for a visit. Learned so much that is going to make our lives 100 times easier next season.