Bumper corners
 

Please forgive a silly question, but this is actually my first time being involved in a build since the dawn of the age of bumpers (with last year being an obvious exception) - can you round the corners on the plywood backing of your bumpers, as long as the other dimensions are as specified in the manual and you have your eight inches of coverage each side of the corner? Or are they required to be square? Only asking because we have some tight tolerances with respect to the boulders at one spot on our robot and the rounded corners might make a difference.

Re: Bumper corners
 

Unfortunately No. the backing is fairly specific of thickness and height.

R21 BUMPERS must be constructed as follows (see Figure 4-7):
A. be backed by ¾ in. (nominal) thick by 5 in. (± ½ in) tall plywood or solid, robust wood. Small
clearance pockets and/or access holes in the plywood backing are permitted, as long as they
do not significantly affect the structural integrity of the BUMPER.


Nice rectangles....

Aloha and good luck this season!

Re: Bumper corners
 

R25 requires pool noodle material in the corners, with examples illustrated in Figure 4-8.

In the past, robot bumpers have been built with rounded corners, covered with pool noodles. The trick is getting a radius bend in the plywood.
Here's an example from 2010:

Re: Bumper corners
 

Absolutely.

Sorry I am thinking as rounding as the edges of the rectangle. Many teams are trying to intake through a gap in the bumpers and rounding the edges to keep the frame as narrow as possible.

Interesting, my rulebook has your quoted rule as
R24 Corner joints between BUMPERS must be filled with pool noodle material. Examples of
implementation are shown in Figure 4-8.

I should get the unencrypted one at home .......just a bit too busy

:eek:

Re: Bumper corners
 

Yeah, to clarify, I meant rounding the corners of the plywood rectangles near our boulder intake, not rounding the corners of the overall bumper perimeter.

Re: Bumper corners
 

That won't work. The plywood backing of your BUMPER must be 5 inches wide for the entire length. You can't bevel off a corner of it.

Re: Bumper corners
 

If you mean rounding the corners of the bumper as it faces you (meaning cutting in to the 5" height) then no that would not be legal.