welding is defiantly the way to go.
use a heat gun to melt the ends stick them together and run water over it. in 30 secs it will be ready for use. idk why other teams say wait hrs its not like glue its molten plastic once it cools its ready to go.
Squirrel - check out pvc pipe. There is a schedule 80 pipe who’s id is the same as the od on a schedule 40. You can cut small pieces of the 80, then force them over the 40 to act as guides. I believe is was 3" or around there for the schedule 40. In this way, you don’t have to even use fasteners or glue. Just the friction holds it very well.
Neat idea…we’ll see if we need it. For now we have a comb thing working reasonably well.
We used this to build the prototype -
http://www.mcmaster.com/#about-belts/=fwr5sl
And the ones referenced at the top once we had the final design and dimensions.
For Lunacy, we used 1-5/8 OD PVC with 1/4" belting, slightly smaller than recommended.
We took the couplers for joining sections of the pipe and cut them in half and used them as spacers for the belts.