Quote:
Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi
Are you guys by any chance creating a Poof style 2013 bot, sans the 30 point climber?
One comment on the gussets: Unless 1/8" was just material you had laying around anyway, you can definitely go with thinner plate for the gussets and avoid pocketing with the plasma (I'm assuming those were cut on a plasma because of the edges, correct me if I'm wrong). You could also just use a large radius on the inside corners to cut out material while keeping them very strong. Just a suggestion.
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Thanks for the comments!
We did have some 1/8th lying around, but also some 1/16" stuff. We've always done 1/8" for gussets, I've just never liked how 1/16" is so flexible compared to 1/8". Well definitely try it some time in the future though, where the gussets aren't taking much of the load.
We waterjetted the gussets ourself, although I can use the plasma cutter too. We prefer to use the waterjet because it leaves a much nicer finish than the plasma cutter and doesn't tend to warp the part. On the other hand, we did have to pay by the minute for cutting time. Going to 1/16" on the gussets would probably save us a significant amount of money.
The poofs did show us the strategic worth of a fast floor pickup bot, but the design isn't a copy of theirs (well, we are getting BBD from them, but you get the idea). Our design is closer to 1538's. However, as a general rule, I really dislike simply copying successful designs. In my mind, there's a lot of value in seeing what worked before, but making an exact copy of a design is just being lazy. There's rarely a solution you can't improve upon. We looked at robots with really effective pickups, did layouts in CAD, prototyped, and based our final design off our prototype. Our final design is inspired by others successes, but at the end of the day a product of our own hard work.