Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

5/32" maybe? that's what we usually use

If you can't manage to get aluminum welded, you might try using steel, it's easy to weld....there's probably someone on your team who can do it. We got a new freshman to weld our steel frame together this year.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

I couldn't agree more with Billfred on this one. The switch over to 1/16th wall box will reduce costs and weight as long as you spend some time designing your layout out instead of relying on sliding parts.

This should be an easy switch as it is still 1x1 construction. Some friends on 3302 will pre-drill their square tubing with holes on the center line every 1" (or maybe 3/4 or 1/2"). The small holes allow the box material to be easy construction similar to the "kit" extrusions. this allows allows for some kids that are not interested in design to start making stuff right away while the others design to this constraint. this is a neat option, but you do loose some flexibility of dimension. 1x1 is also really common and in a pinch can be found at most Home Depots.

If weight is a higher priority, switching to round tubing for upper structures is a great weight savings, but significantly harder to work with. Round versus square is a 25% savings for the same wall thickness. Round also has lots more wall thicknesses and material compounds to choose from. This too can add to weight savings. Make sure you get some good pictures of how 469 builds their robots. They are (IMO) masters of the thin wall no weld construction.

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All this being said, 3 of my favorite and most competitive robots last year used 80/20 or star bar (25, 341, and 1023). These 3 were able to do it all. They were good shooters, good at collecting, and able to do the bridge well.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

Or you do what we did: craft the shooter on the fly, realize you had some parts wrong, drill out the rivets, place them in the right place, re-rivet...

...and then putty over the holes before painting. ;)

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

So..

Our time doesn't really want to weld, nor do we want to allocate resources to buy a good welder.

As far as gussets go, where would we get them/how would we make them? Is it just any shape plate with bolts..?

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

2815's gussets have been 1/16" flat and angle aluminum from the hardware section of Lowe's, riveted using 1/8" aluminum rivets (usually 2-4 on each end). Cheap, easy to install, easy to repair.

I'd love to see us get to a bent sheetmetal gusset like some of the ones shared here...but the results are suitable for competition.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

The best way imo is to make them in house with a cnc router or with a sponsor who has a waterjet. Either way it will be very little time investmet. Just make sure to make the gussets as thin as possible(1/16 is likely fine fo many applications). By making the gussets thinner you don't have to lighten them. In addition because you don't have to run a lightening pattern and because the parts are thinner they can be machined extremely quickly.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

Uh, we have access to neither of those.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

We use a lot of 1/16th box extrusion with gussets and ESTO connectors, one of the best investments we have made as far as hand tools go is the ratcheting rivet gun.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

Cutting triangles out of square pieces is very easy with a bandsaw. That's how we made all the gussets for our after-season stinger addition. It also has a huge benefit: it's fast and you don't have to wait for anyone. If you want to match drill them - make all your gussets in advance, clamp them together, then drill through them in one shot with a drill press. Your gussets may not be be exactly the same, but the hole pattern will be.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

Do you have access to a hacksaw, metal file, and a drill?

Congratulations, you now have all the tools to make gussets the way 2815 does. :)

There's not a lot of magic to it; if you're worried, get a stick of 1" square tubing and a short (say, 2') length of 1/16"-wall, 1" angle aluminum. Make a box out of the tubing, riveting it with the angle used as gussets. Kick it around the shop a bit and observe its properties in the context of what a robot would encounter (usually with bumpers, remember). You'll be pleased, most likely.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

Drill all the rivet holes in the gusset, then clamp the gusset to the bigger parts. Then drill the first hole all the way thru, and pop a rivet in it. Continue drilling and riveting one hole at a time, until there are two rivets in all the parts. then you can drill all the rest of the holes, and put in the rest of the rivets.

We've been doing this for building our "structures" for years....it's time consuming, but cheap and easy and doesn't take much equipment.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

Thanks for the quick replies guys, I'll forward all of this to our Mechanical Captain.

While I'm one of the more mechanically savvy guys on the team, the final call is to the captain :)

Also, another question/concern. With 80/20, we had the flexibility of just putting a drivetrain together with the parts, and then when we needed to change something or add something, it was a matter off adding a connector or taking this off or adding this. Very simple, with little modification.

I imagine that by using aluminum sq tubing w/ gussets and all, we'll have to plan our drivetrain out much more thoroughly than we did with 80/20 (unless we plan to have a lot of random holes from taking gussets off and on xD)

Is this correct, and how do you cope w/ this?

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

We've been known to add a few extra holes to our robot through bad planning. In 2011, we even took a piece of our arm structure, rotated it around, and drilled a new hole for lack of another piece.

It all comes down to what kinds of forces your pieces will see and how picky you are about appearance. When we botched parts on this year's robot, we took the metal that was still usable in-place and redrilled new holes and placed putty into the holes left behind to smooth it out. Metal that was too weakened from the holes for our liking was cut down and reused in other places when possible. Very few pieces were junked entirely.

But, of course, you can always plan it out and avoid all this. :)

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

CAD, CAD, CAD. As you can tell I'm a CADder. In all seriousness though, the best way to get better really quickly is to start CADding. It allows you to build robots quicker and cheaper. Also in response to not having access to a waterjet, I reccomend that you find a waterjetting sponsor. Any 2d work is really easy to find a sponsor willing to do work for you, because the time commitment is a lot less for them that of a full blown machine shop.

Re: Building the Structure of the Robot?
 

No, but you have access to the most powerful machine tool of all; a telephone.

We had zero machining sponsors, now we've probably had over 30 unique shops run parts for us; All we did was ask.