QQ for established beetlers…
When designing front forks or wedges, how much clearance (how many mm) do you allow for any gap or height difference between the arena floor plates? How flat is that floor?
Reason I ask is that my design rests on a single fixed ‘prong’ at the front - ideally I want it to be able to get under an opponent’s wedge but not get stuck when driving over the join between the floor plates. Would be good to know how much I need to chamfer off the leading edge.
Rather than chamfering off the edge of the wedge, why not have removable “skid plates” that can be added to the underside of the prong?
That way if the floor is perfectly flat or a single piece, you can run without them and be ground scraping.
But if the floor does have seams, you can adjust the height to suit that arena.
That’s an option too, though I’d like to keep it simple as possible. I was planning on making 2-3 different versions of the prong, with different levels of clearance in case we’re getting stuck. It’s just that having never seen the Beetle arena IRL, it’s hard to know how much of a step to plan for - whether we’re talking 1-2mm or as much as 5+mm…