Even if the the blue part fails we will have supporting structures welded on to the yellow frame to hold the bumper.
It sounds like the fix actually shouldn’t have been enough to pass, for that exact reason. Per R410, at least 1/2" of the end of each bumper must be supported by the FRAME PERIMETER (ie the fixed, structural parts of the robot inside the bumper zone). A 1/4" piece of flexible material really doesn’t meet those needs. Please everyone, support your bumpers!
With “structural elements” having no all-caps DEFINITION, I would expect almost any fixed non-articulate supports to pass.
Are weak supports a bad idea that won’t hold up for a full season? Probably, but no one’s ever shown me a rule against bad ideas. Pass with verbal warning of the physics is exactly how that situation should have played out.
Uhhhhh the flange may be, but the thickness of the flat material itself before bending… There is no way that is 1cm, the baseplate alone would be most of the weight of the robot, let alone the brake or press needed for that think of material and the minimum bend radius required.
I asked twice they said it was 1cm but I will be at the workshop tommorrow, I’ll mesure it myself to be sure.
Bumper issues aside, have you built this robot yet and are you able to turn?
That long wheelbase with just the 4 wheels looks like you’re going to have a very difficult time turning your robot.
We built it and yes you are correct. Turning it is really hard.
You will need to reduce the amount of friction either the front or back wheels have against the carpet, if you want to improve your turning without changing your wheel angle.
In the states, the classic method is to swap in omni Wheels (rollers). My own team has also used masking tape around the outside of the wheel to reduce friction. You could also swap either the front or back onto hard plastic wheels instead of rubber wheels.
With your wheels on individual gearboxes, a creative way to improve the turning could be to set the wheels non-parallel. That’ll do weird things to standard radius turn performance, but could improve spinning in place.