HDPE Flexibility

[Ryltar]

I read on the materials tutorial about HDPE. It seems to be the best material for my current robot design. It was mentioned there that this material will bend and flex if the dimensions are not chosen properly.

I was wondering, at what spans would the material (current design plans for 1/4in thick material) flex?

Also, sorry if this is written down elsewhere but my searches didn't yield any results.

[Admin]

I was wondering, at what spans would the material (current design plans for 1/4in thick material) flex?

Flexing depends on five things:
weight
length of material
thickness of material
shape of material
modulus of elasticity

All the equations are here:
http://www.engineersedge.com/beam_calc_menu.shtml

But the most common one is this:
http://www.engineersedge.com/beam_bending/beam_bending9.htm

You basically want to minimize deflection. This will probably not make much sense to you at first, so read up on 'Cantilever beam calculation' using google, etc.

One day I'll write a tutorial on this . . .