[the.miler]

This is one of the reasons why we just spray paint our parts; we make our parts, take them outside, prime, and paint them, and have them back within a few hours if we're in a real hurry. It likely beats the turnaround we would see if we powder coated. The other reason is that we haven't really explored powder coating yet, since we have a solution for making our robot look nice already in place.

Sure, the spray paint might wear and chip and the powder coating won't, but from a distance nobody will be able to tell the difference.

In terms of deciding whether something is worth painting; if it's not going to be iterated, it gets painted (drivetrain, superstructure). If we think it might go through some significant changes soon, we generally hold off a bit. For example, we didn't paint the collector until we knew it was going to work well enough for us to put it on the robot in the first place. Some parts of our robot remain unpainted, and that's also okay with us. All we need it to do is stand out on the field and look pretty, and as long as enough of the robot is yellow and black, the painting has done its job.

Just my take!