Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Basic Pattern Overlap: Channel

Okay so I figured I'd start with the most obvious parts of Tetrix and GoBILDA, Channel. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they are EXTREMELY compatible! I had already built a GoBILDA frame just to see how sturdy it was and get the feel (it was extremely sturdy).
The first piece of Tetrix I pulled out happened to fit right between the frame I had built using GoBILDA. This is cool because that means the overall channel length are the same for likely several different lengths. You can see what I mean in this picture. This was just a quick test, I'm still thinking of how you can bolt it together, I pulled out a couple of my 90* flat steel brackets and they fit well on the top. However you need to put a channel piece or l bracket it the corner to make it sturdy.

Next I tried bolting a longer bar straight across the top, keep in mind that this is a Tetrix piece being put on a completely GoBILDA spaced frame. This is what it looks like. These are 18" Tetrix beams I believe but the bolt interfaces I discovered will carry down to the smaller pieces of channel as well. I will summarize my findings for attaching Tetrix Channel perpendicular to GB(goBILDA) spacing. This is easily accomplished. From my tests you could attach the Tetrix beam every 8mm along the GB channel(that's GB grid spacing). However, you use different holes depending where on the pattern you are. In addition Tetrix has the 8-hole, no-hole, and 4-hole pattern spacing, depending which of those is on the spacing it also changes what holes can be used. I photographed it in two ways, as you can see my bar doesn't go flush across my frame. Another thing to point out here is that the ends of Tetrix go flush with the GB when bolted on. Also for reference I am using 6-32 bolts to fit through the holes, this is necessary because Tetrix is designed for this size. Here are the pics:






As you can see each configuration of the beam allows at least 3 bolts to be added! I think this is great, it makes it very easy to adapt from say a GB drivetrain that takes advantage of easy motor mounts and bigger axles/bearings but uses the compact size of Tetrix to build the robot up from that.
I will follow up with showing how you can add vertical Tetrix to this easily and how to attach Tetrix parallel to GB.

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