Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamHeard
Yes, our entire 2012 robot (and various parts of older robots) were held together with gussets, not welding.
We made our own cnc router, so the ability to cut arbitrary gussets in house on zero notice was helpful.
Your suggestion of having a sponsor cut gussets is totally valid, a waterjet or laser will fly through 1/16" plate.
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Just to add in, even if you don't have a waterjetting/CNC/laser cutting sponsor, you still can do the work yourself at a local hackerspace. We're planning on cutting our gussets and bellypan with a hackerspace's waterjet, rather than milling them in our own shop (which took forever).
In our experience, gussets are a great way to save weight (because you can use thinner wall tubing), but rigidity is compromised. I'm hoping to in house weld our drive base again for the sake of rigidity, but I'd concider doing riveted gussets on our superstructure again, even though our tower was a but wobbly last year.
As a final note,
don't have freshman make all your frame pieces in a drill press and expect all the holes to line up. Take the time to CNC the frame members, to have experienced members do the drilling, or be prepared to have these same freshmen do a lot of filling...