Chassis/Armour to weight ratio

[Eventorizon]

In an ideal world your Armour and Chassis are one and the same. Carbide, Apollo, Aftershock, Ironside 3, Eruption... all of them have a design where some, and in some cases all, of their armour forms the chassis. They use sheet Hardox to form a monocoque and then attach all the components inside on their own mounts. This doubling up on jobs for the same part of the robot frees up weight to be used elsewhere, or it means you can use the same amount of weight but its much stronger.

This method is also a reasonably cheap and easy way of building a machine as you can cut the Hardox with an angle grinder and then weld it yourself if you have too. Most teams lasercut the parts to save the effort, but they tend to be the ones welding it up.

Of course this isn't always possible, depending on your design, but even those that don't follow this method entirely find a place for it, usually in armour pods or single piece folded chassis.