I noticed, from a few videos, that the aluminum base of the Framework is flat, both outside and on the inside face.
It is possible to increase this surface toughness by a lot with a simple geometry adjustment, e.g. with a corrugated or honeycomb surface, with no need for more material/weight/space.
See the attached picture for an example.
The chassis is magnesium.
Such honeycombing/corrugation aims to increase the bending moment (and thus the stiffness) without adding material/weight. It does nothing to save on space, since it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to design the laptop such that bits of electronics are making use of the space between the reinforcements. It also doesn’t do anything for toughness, since toughness is a material property and is unaffected by geometry on the macro scale. As a point of clarity, the concept of “surface toughness” doesn’t make physical sense, because toughness is defined as the energy per unit volume that a material can absorb before rupturing.
If it’s stiffness you’re after, you can get more stiffness for the same amount of space by just increasing the thickness without cutting into it. This also saves on tooling/machining costs. My guess is that they used enough material to make the chassis sufficiently stiff without having to bother with any sort of cutout.
Isn’t the FW16 base cast? Casting means some geometry is “free”.
I’m sure that the engineers/consultants would have brought up any such discussion if it was needed.
