Interesting material usage?
 

So, at this mar championship I got the opportunity to see a variety of "nonstandard" materials in use. This got me thinking .. What do other teams use?

So far I've seen:

C-channel
Box channel
Carbon fiber
PVC
Uhmw plastic
Plywood
Aluminum/steel sheets

What are some of the more unusual things you've used?

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

I wouldn't say its terribly unusual, but FRC558 utilized a large amount of polycarbonate sheet this season.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

Copious amounts of shiny pink fabric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDLsJxaACUA

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

Orange barrier construction netting for our catcher, pvc, perforated poly-carbonates

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

We used FR-4 plates this year to lay our electronics on.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

take a look at http://www.estoconnectors.com/

My team uses these connectors in our drivetrain and usually finishes the frame in 3hrs.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

Team 3824 3d prints a large percentage of its robot including structural elements.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

I didn't get a (wood) 2x4 into the robot this year, but there is a pair of 1x4s, they fit perfectly on the top of the kit chassis sides.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

We used thin wall corrugated polycarbonate panels this year for our wings. We even ran pneumatic tubing through the channels.

We also added some plywood to our launcher bar after Dallas to prevent some of the bending we saw at that event.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

80-20. All day long. Pretty strong stuff. On our robot, we used 1x1 and 1x2. Very little mechanical issues, but it's fairly expensive.

We've used e-glass honeycomb, cutting boards (cheap source of uhmw), a box fan (with a first allowable motor rigged into it), and many other interesting items.

Though, if you want to go way back to the good ol days (before bumpers and CIMs)... The old timers among us can definitely remind you of how creative we used to be.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

My favorite is when we, The Grapes of Wrath (so named because we hail from wine country in NYS) used a discarded wine barrel for our hopper, thus making our robot smell quite strongly of strawberry Manischewitz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfFGwIBrspM

We were *terrible* at game-play because we thought we could "snipe" with a shooter and failed rather spectacularly at it, but our fantastic human player helped make up for--

Oh, wait, I forgot the first rule of Lunacy!

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

Team 781 tries to use hockey sticks every year. This year it's part of our shooter.

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

1523s chassis is entirely CNCd c channel and has been for years. also our El Torro pickup uses copper pipe insulation as a grip material (we found it to be extremely effective)

Re: Interesting material usage?
 

Corrugated cardboard. Not my team but a local team built a robot this year who's chassis and the main mount for its shooter were built out of cardboard. I wish I had some pictures of it but the memory was full on my phone when I was at the event that they were at. I have contacted them about putting it on display in the lobby at the Washington FIRST Robotics Fieldhouse. So hopefully I'll have some detailed pictures of it to post in the future.