Tell me about your bumpers!
 

Our team wants to design a simple and quick way to get our bumpers on and off quickly, so I figured I would ask you wonderful folks.

Tell me about your bumper design, and it can be tried and true or something you came up with on the spot.

Best of luck in the competition!

Re: Tell me about your bumpers!
 

Here's a good thread about bumper mounts. Many solutions involve using quick-release pins

Re: Tell me about your bumpers!
 

Our bumpers from last year had a rather elegant system. We screwed pieces of c-channel to our bumpers that were bigger than the square tubing of our chassis, lined the holes in the c-channel up with holes in the tubing, and dropped pins in. System never failed, and one guy could change the bumpers out in about a minute.

Re: Tell me about your bumpers!
 

Frame: WCD variant
Bumpers: Most likely will have 4 studs in the 4 corners of the bot with holes in them. The bumpers will be constructed as one solid box, then lowered over the studs and quick release pins inserted into the holes.

The real question is: sharp corners or rounded corners - and what does it say about your team?

Re: Tell me about your bumpers!
 

Last year team 1710 attempted the same idea and it turned out great. We designed a sort of 'flipper' thing that would flip along an axis that ran the length of the bumper down the middle. It only took 3 people 2 meetings to get it done, but it saved our team a lot of time in the pits. If you want to know more about it just reply and I'll try to get a picture of them.

Re: Tell me about your bumpers!
 

Thanks for the reply, but after reading through the forum posted above, we decided to rig up a simple system using c-channel and quick release pins.

Re: Tell me about your bumpers!
 

How do teams using a WCD style drive mount the bumpers within the 2-10 inch range? I played around with a WCD and that was a concern for me. You would almost have to make "risers" off your frame every 7-8 inches to keep it legal? Right?

Re: Tell me about your bumpers!
 

We didn't change our bumpers at all. My mother sewed some bumper covers with reversible red and blue parts, joined at the center of each bumper. Flipped to the left, it's blue; flipped to the right, it's red. They are held in place with narrow Velcro strips along the top and bottom.

We only had two bumpers, one for the left side and one for the right. There is a gap allowed between bumpers, so this is legal.