I think it's pretty fun that I kicked off a new branch of robot material selection here with my advocacy of steel robots. I was at a regional so I didn't get to participate in the conversation over the weekend, but here's a few words:
Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
Ooh, ouch. Those are fightin' words....
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Oh, you know this was meant in the friendliest spirit...1108 has built some rickety riveted robots. I know that airliners are aluminum riveted and they do pretty well, but not with pop-rivets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mman1506
Yeh, 1114's robots are always soo rickety and wobbly /s
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1114? Are they any good? (Joking, of course they are) Yes, aluminum is a great material.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratdude747
Have you ever considered MIG or TIG as an upgrade down the road?
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We'd love to have mig or tig, but the welder is my personal welder and a bottle is $150 or so, plus $50 to refill. Mostly we grind the surface of the welds to remove spatter, but with kids welding, grinding the surfaces to make them smoother would probably be helpful anyway.
Probably yes, we'll move up sometime.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Kirch
Agree to disagree here. Aluminum is lighter and we use more of it.  |
Actually, I should mention that I'm an advocate of selecting the material on each component to match the function.
We have steel sides and arms on our robot, but the pneumatic catapult hoop is PVC. The flex actually adds to the strength of the shot.
The Catapult is supported by fiberglass strut-channels on the power-end and aluminum squares with pine inside them to prevent crush on the hold-down end.
We have numerous guards that are polycarbonate
the 'floor' of our frame is 3/8" UHMW so electronic components can be just screwed down with wood screws.
So we've used just about every material on our robot somewhere.
Just like in any engineering, I believe material selection is a process and needs to be thought out for each part. I teach the kids a class on it too.