[jacob9706]

Originally Posted by Levansic

I'm curious about your round bumpers. On our prior round robot, we laminated 5 layers of a 5/32" mahogany plywood, dry, to make our ~14-1/2" radius bumpers.

This year, we needed a tighter 8" inside radius. We also wanted a very light bumper to aid in climbing. To get this, we made a birch-balsa-birch sandwich, similar to what was used in the brittish DeHaviland Mosquito bomber of World War II. We had to soak the birch for over two days to get it pliable enough, and then had to let everything dry on forms before laminating. This was a LOT of work, and took the efforts of ten students from start to finish. We learned a lot of ways to miscommunicate ideas and instructions.

Your curved wood is very uniform and clean. What did you use to get this great result?

What the students did was hook a industrial vacuum bag to a compressor and bent the layers with that. They pretty much glued them together, stuck them in vacuumed the air out and let it sit for a day.