[Chris is me]

Powdercoating doesn't take us particularly long. If it would ever get in the way we don't do it, but we usually find breaks in the team's meeting schedule to get it done.

We have a sponsor who can turn around a decent number of parts in about a week, and we have our own gun / small oven to do smaller parts in house. We've also paid to have particular parts done overnight at a local auto shop.

It's best to really nail design details in your prototype for the best looking result. Iteration often happens but it doesn't mean you can't paint. At the very worst you just replace a painted part with an unpainted part, not the end of the world.

We had our drive base painted over a few days while we were still finalizing what would go on top of it and how we would attach it to the robot. When the drive base was done we just threw everything together all at once instead of going bit by bit. The manipulator was pretty much done in a night and we paid to have it powdercoated during the next school day, ready to install right after school.

Powdercoating or anodizing isn't super essential but if you find a free few days in your schedule it really isn't that hard to fit in. We probably do way to little prep work (we don't account for powder thickness at all in design, probably should) and it's not very hard for us to throw it all together once it gets in. The trick is to find sponsors for slow turn around work and find cheap places to paint for quick turn around.