[Jim Zondag]

We plasma cut a lot of parts for our robot this year. Normally we have use a waterjet for many of our sheetmetal parts, but our company's waterjet machine broke in early Jan, and was down for the whole build season, so we had to make other plans.

This took a little trial and error, but we were able to make transmission plates, rivet holes and a lot of other fairly precise parts in Aluminum sheet as thin as 0.050" on a plasma cutter. The tolerencing is not nearly as good as a waterjet or laser (but it is good enough for FRC).
A few tips: Use big rivets, we use a lot of 1/4" rivets, so 0.010 tolerence or so on the holes doesn't really matter. Make all bearing holes slighty undersized and ream to fit. Make more simple assembled parts rather than a few complex peices if you are going to form them.