Bumper Material Poll
 

What fabric did your team choose this year to cover their bumpers?

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

1000D Cordura is recommended and that is what we use. That is not a choice on your survey.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Same here. Bumpers are already cut and printed, and sewing started last night!

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Ditto. Some retailers call it Duck Cloth.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

you forgot "what came in FIRST Choice"

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Cordura is a nylon blend and Duck cloth is 100% cotton.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Cordura is a brand name of Nylon. We use the same material. We order it from Seattle Fabrics.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Super relevant thread

Has anyone successfully used multiple bumper materials? I haven't checked the Q&A but the rules do not address it.

Friction with Polycarb should be a concern this year because of the gates. Bumper engineering was coming of age in later 2014, but 2015's game set it back a year.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

We are using the Slick bumper material (Nylon) from AM.

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Citrus Circuits uses Ballistic Nylon on our bumpers.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

R21 c requires that the pool noodles be consistent around the robot, but I did not see anything requiring consistent fabric. We purchased both "traditional" and "slick" fabric from AndyMark shortly before the game reveal. As we have a largely offensive strategy, we plan to make bumpers from the slick "sailcloth" material. We will probably also make a set with the classic cordura and have them handy in case we get called on to play defense; there's no rule I can find that says you can't bring and use four sets of bumpers!

Only thing I remember seeing is the weight limit per set.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Care to share a link to what you use? I know my team is looking into ballistic nylon, I'm curious to where teams are sourcing theirs from.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

We are going with the slick fabric from RoboPromo.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

http://www.rockywoods.com/Fabrics-Ki...pellent-Finish

Dark Navy and Red

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

How does this stuff differ from rip stop nylon?

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Ballistic nylon is thicker, not as slick, and more similar to 1000D Cordura nylon. We ran CoF tests on about 16 different fabrics, including the ballistic nylon from Rockywoods, and found that it was slicker than Cordura nylon, but not as slick as ripstop.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

I wrapped the bumpers in ripstop this year. We were replacing the front bumpers with regular cordura due to the nylon taking a beating at our pre scrimmage yesterday.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

What ripstop did you try?

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Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

We tested that one and it's a lot thinner than some other ripstops we have. I'll try to snap an up close picture of the Joann ripstop next to ballistic nylon at our meeting tomorrow for comparison.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Thanks, We had no issues on the sides or back bumpers. The front were hit a lot against wood yesterday.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

http://imgur.com/a/uoZpL

From left to right: Joann ripstop - ballistic nylon - Cordura nylon

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Chainmail

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

ditto

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

:yikes: Even if you made a triangular robot, getting each corner's bumpers down to under 7# must have been a challenge. Did you source it from Stark Industries, make it yourself, or find another source?:p

Edit: Hmmm.. would chainmail on the robot be considered armor or barding?

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

Which you like the most and what's the cost difference?

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

The ballistic nylon is about $15/yard and Cordura nylon is $12.50/yard. We are using neither but I would choose the ballistic over Cordura and the Joann ripstop.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

We use cordura as well.

What have teams found to be the cheapest bumper material? We want to buy a lot of it to give out to teams with illegal bumpers at events.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

The cheapest that's suitable for bumpers that I have seen is duck cloth or a similar canvas. You can find it online and locally for around $4 a yard.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

After two regionals, our duck cloth bumpers are destroyed. Holes torn in them all over the place. Don't recall having those issues during Aerial Assist.

We'll be trying heavier fabric for champs.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

I've inspected teams that have had ... questionable ... bumper material. The second flimsiest I've seen is actual bedsheets. I'm not sure what the flimsiest ones were, but they'd tear if you looked at them wrong...

Also important is how the fabric is attached to the bumper. I saw a number of teams this year that had BOTH colors removable, and only velcroed onto the bumper wood.

Re: Bumper Material Poll
 

I'm not on a team, so I didn't have to make bumpers this year, but I have a suggestion!

Next year can we have fiberoptic fabric bumpers?!
Alliance colors are set by FMS, numbers are black on the "white" fabric, maybe down the road cool things could be added for when penalties are called on robot X, or if robot Y is disabled, etc.

This idea came entirely out of trying to practice reffing on practice day when bumper color rarely corresponded with the alliance a team was "on" for each practice match :p