Chain Sag - lighter weight chain?

[pillageTHENburn]

@MeticulousMaynard

This is a good point. My sled is somewhere around the 40 lb mark and I haven’t run into any issues with the motors stalling. I need to more accurately measure its weight at some point, my current numbers come from adding together the weights of all the components. I have been wondering if I’m putting too much stress on the motors, though.

This could be because your motors are closer together right? The closer your motors are to each other the more acute the angle is between the chains when the sled is at top center (given the same motor height). The more acute that chain angle is the less tension there is on the chains.

That 39.5 pound number is based on “standard” machine dimensions (I don’t recall off the top of my head what numbers I used but I could look it up if you’re curious). The equation to find the force on two chains under load at a given angle is:
F = (m x 0.5) ÷ cos(a x 0.5)
where:
F is the calculated force on each chain
m is the mass or in our case the weight of the sled
a is the internal angle between the two chains

So if you measure your chain angle when the sled is top center you could plug in your numbers and figure out your max sled weight. (The max is 66 pounds per chain).