Quote:
Originally Posted by HumblePie
We had good luck with a composite material that was 2 thin sheets of aluminum (about .010" thick), bonded to either side of a corrogated plastic core. The trade name is "Alumalite" and it is used in the signmaking industry. It was very light, and had good stiffness. The only downside was that the corrogated core would collapse under concentrated loads.
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1370 used Alumalite for our shooter deck and some other portions this year. It worked very well, but, as
HumblePie noted, the corrugations will crush if you get aggressive with the fasteners. Of course, we had some students crushing our 1x1x1/6 aluminum tubing in our frame, so a little plastic was no problem at that point.
I would not recommend Garolite (G10) or FR4 because of the health hazards and precautions recommended for machining them. If you are going to work with them
correctly, you need ventilation for any dusts and masks/respirators for the operators. At the very least, that was why my former employer had outside machine shops make our G10 parts.
1370 used 1/8" thick High-Strength PVC (perforated) for our electronics deck this year and it worked out very well. We got ours from McMaster-Carr and it is p/n
92985T51. We got the idea from 1089 in 2012 who used perforated polycarbonate on their robot that year.