Re: Using wood on a robot
 

http://blog.kidrobot.com/product-pre...wooden-bender/

...the way nature intended :D

Laminated wood is plenty strong and if there is any doubt; many of you are probably reading this while sitting on a floor supporting your weight on plywood.

One could argue, depending on the scope of the analysis, wood is actually more ecologically friendly. When you consider the way you get your aluminum, steel and plastic and trace it all the way back to the trees, mines and oil wells. Course wood gets a lot less ecofriendly if you use commerical fertilizers.

Re: Using wood on a robot
 

Its Team 58 but thanks for the compliment. Look for a lot of wood this year as well.

Re: Using wood on a robot
 

Use Baltic Birch plywood. Advantages often outweigh aluminum. Wood will bend without breaking and bounce back into shape (of course to a limit). We often feel that wood weight vs strength makes birch superior. Also, so darn easy to work with. Over 80 matches last year (and some really rough ones) and the bot looks like it did on bag and tag day.

Re: Using wood on a robot
 

Riot crew always builds such sweet (wooden) machines.

Re: Using wood on a robot
 

We use wood as a base and a panel for the electronics all the time. Also, we do what we call "aluminizing" the wood to all of the piece which basically means spray paint it an aluminum color. That gets interesting during inspections occasionally. Last year the inspector went to test continuity to make sure the frame wasn't being used as a ground and put one of the multimeter probes on the "aluminized" wood base and was surprised when we told him it was wood.

Re: Using wood on a robot
 

Wood this year:

spacer inside 1" square aluminum tubing
spacer inside manipulator mechanism
component of manipulator

Previously:

electrical panel

Re: Using wood on a robot
 

Wood this year:

Robot