pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Paint thinner or any Orange Pumice hand cleaner would help.

The base looks nice!

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Looks great!
[SPOILER][/spoiler]

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Is there a reason you guys decided to go with the black tubing intake over a standard roller? You might have a little difficulty picking up balls that are against the wall.

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

We wanted to pick up from both sides, and decided it would be simpler to have one central pick up area in the middle of our robot instead of two separate intakes on either side converging into one tower, causing more balls to get stuck.

Thanks all for the kind words and advice! I'm looking into getting that orange hand pumice cleaner now. :)

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Is this your practice bot or are you assembling 30 pounds at your competition? Just wondering how you managed to do this within bagging and robot allowance rules since I'd love to have our frame powdercoated between a competition.

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

This is our "practice" bot, but it will be used in competition. We will switch out the top and bottom frames (both weighing less than 30 pounds each) separately at our two competitions, so by the time we get to Central Valley, we'll have the whole "practice" bot competing. Until then, we'll have to settle for a colorful top-half of the robot at SVR.

It's not powdercoated. We hand-painted it in a little under 1/2 an hour. We also welded it entirely ourselves (mentor welded, but we designed), and that took a little less than a few hours. We guestimated that by doing it this way, it would save a bunch of time rather than getting it custom cut and powder coated. If you don't have the time or resources to get your robot custom done, or powdercoated, I highly suggest doing this. Not only is it simple, it's cheap, takes no time at all, and looks great!

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Any idea of the weight before/after?

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

I understand that it is cheap and takes no time at all but I would suggest that a few of your buddies and yourself search out for a local powder coat sponsor who can turn around in a day or so. That day, you guys can work more on making your bot better than waiting for paint to dry. :)

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Why not spray paint, though? It goes on much faster and more evenly.

Spray paint tends to have a rather inviscid composition that lends itself to nice smooth finishes (except around sharp edges). Brushes and normal paint often leave brushstrokes (unless you thin the paint correctly).

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

I'd go with Cory, much better overall finish.

Stays on way better than regular paint, plus while our parts are out to powder. We have time to work on other items.

Like Cory said, we have about 2-3 powdercoat sponsors that do about a 4 hour turnaround for us. Only takes about 2-3 hours to really powdercoat a part.

-RC

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Sorry to the jack the thread for a sec, RC do your PC sponsors do the prep work for your parts too? (like fine sanding and cleaning)

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Yeah—sorry, I meant spray paint was better than a brush. Powdercoating is definitely better than mere paint of any variety; it's just a little harder to arrange logistically.

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

Akash we have three sponsors that gladly donate their time.

The first guy doesn't care, the PC place is apart of the company I work for. He basically will shoot anything we give him and we'll receive it back within 4 hours. So we have to do all the prep work, mainly just clean and debur parts. Which we have learned to do anyways.

The 2nd/3rd place really cares about detail, we do zero prep work and we receive the parts back in 1wk. They'll clean/sandblast parts along with do multiple coats... Which is a good and bad thing. We only give them parts when we don't care about timing and the our go to guy is backed up.

I'd honestly speak with your powdercoating place, the best thing to do is to just have it prepped ready to go. It makes their life easy and they'll be much happier. Plus they'll turn around the part hella fast.

-RC

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

1 day turn around? Our sponsor can sometimes do it in 1 day, but they generally tell us it will take about 2-3, especially depending on what kind of jobs they have. 1 day is excellent if you can find it.

We spraypainted a few of our parts, and they look horrible in comparison to our powdercoated frame and other pieces. The pain comes off extremely easily, isn't as bright and shiny, and it doesn't even hide the finish. It's hard to find a better process than powdercoating.

Does anyone have experience with car paints or anything similar on an FRC robot?

Re: pic: 256 painted chassis
 

We're working on getting a powder coating sponsor in the off-season. That, and a laser/waterjet sponser (Actually, they're the same company). Until then, manually painting it worked pretty well, and compared to our shiny grey steel of the past, this robot looks like the best thing ever to us. We would spray paint, but everything was on the robot already, and we didn't want to take it off.

Thanks a bunch for the support!