Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

There are plenty of competitive and successful robots that use wood. Some more notable examples include 1114 (for reinforcement), 1726 (see their 2009 chassis), and 1771 (2009-2010 robots)

Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

Don't get me wrong. Even though wood isn't the best, there isn't anything particularly wrong with wood as a structural material, but our team has always fallen back to wood as a last resort. So wood is a bit taboo. Wood doesn't have a very good strength to weight ratio anyway. There are reasons we use metal and composites over wood dope and fabric in aircraft structures nowadays.

Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

I think I am offended :p . I am proud of our wooden chassis heritage. Sean Cantrell came up with an innovative design approach that we have used since 2009. The Digital goats look like they are doing something similar this year. We have found improvements in technique each year, and all have been outstanding (a regional win each in 2009 and 2010). This year's bot is coming along well, and the chassis is all wood. We don't see any advantage to aluminum (wood shavings never smoke the electronics), and expect to continue the wooden tradition.

Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

How many aircraft are routinely intentionally slammed into each other many times a day? After looking at the Thunderchicken's chassis at worlds last year, and comparing it to ours, I was very glad that ours was wood. There was a lot of dented, twisted metal on that very fine chassis.

Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

I still stand by my opinion that metal is a better structural material than wood. A well designed metal chassis is lighter and than a wooden chasis of the same strength. :p The chassis does look very nice though :)

Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

For the same strength you will be extremely hard pressed to design a metal chassis with the same weight as wood. Baltic birch plywood is approximately 4 times less dense than aluminum. Another neat feature of the plywood chassis is the ability to absorb impact without permanently deforming, something that aluminum does not fare too well with. Using interlocking tabs and glues effectively creates one giant composite frame without the need for any fasteners saving even more weight over aluminum.

Ultimately it is up to the team to decide what materials to use but it would be extremely unwise to make blanket statements about a material without fully understanding it's properties.

Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

wood? aluminum? heck, we're using ABS sewer pipe for our arm...it's light, strong, resilient, cheap, easy to find, easy to use, looks like powder coated aluminum when you spray paint it, etc.

Re: 1/8th thick aluminum
 

OK I'm sorry I made a general statement about wood. But to every rule there's an exception and to every exception there's a a rule right? I admit it I spoke too quickly. *takes foot out of mouth*

It all really does come down to how you use a material though.