What does your team use to make the clovers for tetras?

[Tigerlily-87]

I'm just curious...we only got a few of the clover connecters in our kit, so we needed to make some more. We made some temporary ones out of cardboard and duct-tape :cool: , but only until we could find something better.

Does anyone have any other ideas for what we can effectively make them out of?

[jgannon]

Lexan has been working fine for our team.

[Tigerlily-87]

I meant besides lexan... :rolleyes:

[BoyWithCape195]

Our team used aluminum, they work very good.

[DAN THE MAN]

using a thin cutting board is what the kit uses and it works. you could also use thin aluminum or lexan

[Anchi]

1/4th" lexan and a heat gun

[Jeff Pahl]

We cut up a piece of vinyl siding to make a bunch. It was cheap and is working well to help visualize the actual sizes of the tetras, but it is not going to hold up once the bot starts handling them. We'll have to make some more later from lexan or aluminum.

[tiffany34990]

yeah we're using like 1/8 lexan and one of our mentors used this metal sheets --just cut everything w/ snips and it works.

[PVCMike]

We got a plastic Mud Flap from a tractor trail from our advisors shop. Tough, easy to manipulate, cheap. any local Truck Shop should have it. Make sure its plastic though ans not rubber.

[Joe Menassa]

We used the sheet of HDPE from the 03 & 04 fields. The stuff works great and we have plenty of it.

[Andrew Schuetze]

We used the sheet of HDPE from the 03 & 04 fields. The stuff works great and we have plenty of it.

I'll ditto that. I think we began using that last year as scrap for projects and we pulled some pieces out of the junk bin and it works great. In fact, they almost have the same qualities as the kit clovers.

:cool:

[KTorak]

We used Lexan, and heated it up with a heat gun after making the tetra so it didn't crack and break.

[Anthony Kesich]

We used Wal Mart. We found small cutting boards for 89 cents, bought most of the stock and brought em back. They were just big enough to cut two clovers out of. so $1.78 plus tax for 4 clovers, bot bad. The only problem was they wrre thick, so we had to use a heat gun (actually I lie, it was a blowtoarch) to melt them. Felt kinda funny after they caught on fire a few times.

-Tony K

[RoboCat05]

My team used .032 aluminum sheeting. It worked great. Thin enough to bend and strong enough to hold the structure together. Cheap and easy to do.

[Spikey]

We used some cheap flexible plastic, unfortunately our robot has been making quick work of the connectors, duck tape has become a new favorite.

[Gabriel Mendez]

We used 1/8 lexan it flexed pretty well, no need for heat gun nor propane torch. :)

[Cyberguy34000]

We tried making the center Tetra by using only the clover leaves included with the kit. We wanted to see if we could save some time by not machining out the parts in the manual. Wow was that was flimsy :). So then we thought that aluminum might be stronger, so we rebuilt everything with the plastic clover leaves doubled up with a aluminum cloverleaf cutout. It helped a bit but not enough, so then we added aluminum braces and the thing was fine :).


But anyways... Aluminum is an excellent substitute, just make sure to round off the edges or duct tape them so they aren't too sharp :)

[DaSpyder]

we used three button backs and pop riveted them together into a trianglular shape. works pretty good and bends pretty good.

[Bcahn836]

We also did ours out of vinyl siding but we didn't have enough so we used the linoleum flooring stuff, works very well and is easy to manipulate

[falconmaster]

1/8 inch clear lexan works for us too!!

[dvd_hawk]

I'm just curious...we only got a few of the clover connecters in our kit, so we needed to make some more. We made some temporary ones out of cardboard and duct-tape :cool: , but only until we could find something better.

Does anyone have any other ideas for what we can effectively make them out of?

our team has used aluminum an thick lexan

[Damian Manda]

We used LDPE cut with out laser engraver/cutter. This only works marginally though, as the plastic likes to remelt behind the area that had just been cut. It also warped a lot when making a large sheet of them, so we could not do the second pass to make them actually cut out, and then had to break them out like an ice cube tray. Still, we were able to make about 40 of them in about an hour (most of which was taken up by the cutting process). If you dont have a laser cutter, this is irrelevant though.

I want to try lexan, as that cuts much more cleanly, but I think we have enough until some break.

I am interested to know if anyone has cut them with a water jet, as that might work better than the laser.

[Bharat Nain]

Double Cardboard.. it worked fine.

[Adam Richards]

Thick rubber. Bends easily, maintains it's shape, and it's durable!

[Collmandoman]

We used the highway robbery $15 sets from Innovation First. scamed =/
but they are nice

[Tsom467]

We used 1/4" Lexan. We had one of our students draw the clover in Autocad, then used our (new) CNC Milling machine to mill out the clovers. The it was lots of blood (literally!) and sweat as we bent them into tetras. Made 1 yesterday, 9 today. My and an engineer/mentor's hands are all cut up! But they're built.

[NoodleKnight]

Lexan, yeah you probably get the point by now. But I was thinking, if you happen to have a lot of hot glue sticks standing around, you could probably have your buddies hold the tetra together then you can just stick everything with lots of hot glue -- like use a propane torch and hold the sticks with metal tongs... just a thought

[dez250]

Ive found a pretty easy way to make them cheaply.

While walking through the paint aisle at Home Depot today my eye was caught by a shelf display of bucket lids. These lids are made for buckets from like 5" to over a foot in diameter. The larger ones are 1/4" HDPE and the smaller ones are 1/8" LDPE. The nice thing is i was able to just trace more or less the whole clover on the lid and cut it out with scissors. Since it is a little flimsy i decided to do two clovers per corner. The lids i used were for 8" diameter buckets and were 48 cents each. Hope this helps you out.

[dhitchco]

Elsewhere in this forum was a discussion about using plastic tie-wraps as the corner connectors especially for the goals; not the movable tetras.

Just drill holes through the ends of the goal pieces, thread a long nylon tie-wrap strap but leave them loose. Once the entire goal is put together, you can "cinch-up" the nylon tie wraps to make the structure rigid.

That way, you save the cost of the PVC end caps (which seem to be in short supply) plus you have less labor to assemble and a lot less time to dis-assemble when done.

[Whiteviper]

lexan works great, but make sure when you buy the caps you get flat ones, we just got some rounded ones they still work but not nearly as nice as flat ones in the kit.

[sporkytherobot]

We used frisbee's but they started to crack, so we are using the tops to 5 gallon tubs. they are working out fine. They save us a lot of money.

[Pin Man]

we bought more... enough for 20 tetras... like 15 bucks a piece or set or something... in the end about 1000 bucks we are wasting for 20 tetras...

[FIRSTnameisJay]

the best stuff to use is just some 1/8'' lexan that you can buy at home depot or lowes the stuff is fairly cheap and fairly nice to cut

[EOC]

We used the plastic from surplus cafeteria chairs. It worked surprisingly well.

[artic_raven]

we use lexan that has been cut out with a bansaw.

[DDRAngelKurumi]

We bought some rubbermaid tupaware ((spelling?)) and cut them.

[Rickertsen2]

some sort of 3/16" grey plastic sheet. Anybody have any idea what kind of plastic this might be? We have no idea where it comes from. Sheets of it keep magically apearing in one of our closets.

[663.keith]

we had some people mold some of the clovers out of the same stuff as the ones in the kit (LDPE if memory serves me correct), and we should hopefully have them today or tomorrow.

[thoughtful]

Our teacher, Mr.Catania tried thin lexine, thick lexine and finally aluminium. He is a craftsman! :D . He and his guys made great aluminum clovers and they work super too.

[justbobdanish]

we used a freshman....to cut our 1/8'' aluminum....they work fine I guess.... :rolleyes:

[plutonium83]

Here at 639, we use 25 layers of stapled construction paper.

[663.keith]

Here at 639, we use 25 layers of stapled construction paper.

how did you get a staple through 25 pieces of construction paper? :ahh:

[akshar]

we used a cutting board from the dollar store and its holding up pretty well

[xFlashbacksx]

Our team used like the rubber car mats..those worked really well and we just had two or three of them together. ;)

[jmatocha]

I got a rotary cutting mat in Wal-Mart's craft section. It's a June Tailor brand and purple. I cut it on the band saw, but you could probably use heavy scissors or tin snips.

I started with the kit ones as a template, but found it to be sturdier if I did not cut so deeply between the lobes... I wondered if a triangle would work and be lots easier to cut.

[Phil Paspalas]

We traced the clovers on old storage bin lids and cut them out on a band saw. Then we made a fixture to locate the circle on a drill press to drill 1/4" holes in 5-6 at once. We used two at a time on each end for strength. Two lids easily allowed us to make 10 tetras. :cool:

[ZZII 527]

We traced the clovers on old storage bin lids and cut them out on a band saw. Then we made a fixture to locate the circle on a drill press to drill 1/4" holes in 5-6 at once. We used two at a time on each end for strength. Two lids easily allowed us to make 10 tetras. :cool:

Yep, we cut up some Stack Attack lids as well. Works well.

[Kelly322]

We made a few out of storage bins/totes, but found that they broke fairly easily when we started handling the tetras. We ended up using some left over aluminum diamond plate cut with a bandsaw, and that worked great. You just have to make sure to file down sharp edges, or they can be a bit dangerous.

Kelly =)

[Bcahn836]

We also did ours out of vinyl siding but we didn't have enough so we used the linoleum flooring stuff, works very well and is easy to manipulate


So far the linoleum has held up and hasn't broke. the vinyl siding we were using did break even though we used about 3 layers of the stuff.

[cire]

We wasted money and bought the ones from IF, And we managed to break 5/6 tetra's the night we made them. Thanks for all the idea's, I dont think we want to buy any more of them :rolleyes:

[Eria4044]

Our team uses only the most cutting edge technology in it's tetras. Mainly bolts and glue. It works surprisingly well. :D

[JakeGallagher]

We used the flanging that plumbers use to hang pipes from ceilings, I don't know what you would call it, but here's a link:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32907&highlight=cheap+tetras
I posted some pictures in there.

[Winged Wonder]

wow, there are a lot of creative ideas for tetra-making. :) we made clovers out of lexan and aluminum... it it seems like regardless of what they're made out of, they always end up getting broken. i think i've broken two goals, and at least 10 tetras... (well.. i keep breaking the same tetras, even though they fix them differently every time) i think we eventually had to resort to creatively used zip ties once...

i wonder how many tetra casualties there will be at competitions...

[Shu Song]

We used some high density polyethelene(can't spell), and it works great. We neglected to round off the clovers so they look like Mistsubishi logos. :)

[Kit Gerhart]

I'm wondering what will be used at the competitions. Ours that came with the kit didn't last long at all before breaking, and the 1/8 inch lexan we made didn't do much better. We now have some thin rusty steel (~1/32 inch) which has held up OK, but gets bent and mis-shapen. If they use the same clovers at the competitions that came with the kit, I hope they have lots of spare parts and tetra "mechanics."