[jvriezen]

Originally Posted by sharrington9614

The first season of my team, long before I was there we had no way of cutting metal so the whole thing for the most part was made out of plywood. Surprisingly it held up for completion but in the post season it caught fire so all the remains of Woody ( all our robots names are one defining characteristic or function with a y at the end) is a 1x1.5 ft pice of plywood

Our robots in 2011, 2012, and 2013 are mostly made out of (high quality) plywood. We have a full metal shop available to us (and wood shop) A professional mechanical engineer who designs garbage trucks and such thinks we are brilliant for using plywood. In 2012 we won the Industrial Design award and the Engineering Excellence award and were Finalists and semi-finalists in the two regionals. We also attended two off season events (champion and finalist) and the one day MN State High School League tournament (semi-finalist) And lots of demos, and the bot is still going strong. Most people think our plywood is aluminum until they get close to it (sometimes very close.)

Never underestimate the power of plywood.