Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankJ
Not to mention that when you get to <0.100" material, the skill level required to weld aluminum goes way up. Nothing like burning a hole is the last weld, killing the entire piece to ruin your day. 
If you have the resources, welding is great fun. If I had the resources in place (A good welder for aluminum is $1000+) it is a good resource. If you don't there areas that would get more bang for your buck. YMMV |
$1000 is getting away cheap. And with GTAW (TIG) welders, a $1000 welder buys you very little in the way of an good amp control such as a pedal or thumb trigger. If you TIG weld without the amp control, it becomes even more an art to get little in avoiding edges turning down - it requires more table time that many teams cannot afford to offer in a short build season.
We recently purchased a Thermal Arc 161 after borrowing 5542's and it did the job. However, if you saw our 2016 robot, we also have a steel subassembly that carried most of the carnage that the Strongholds defenses mustered.
We also used rivets extensively and none broke - replaced, but never failed.
We will continue to use the GTAW process as it provides students a way to learn a new welding process - but it will never be a prominent process of joining for our robots.
Oh - and NDSU's Bison Robotics Greenhorns Robot was named Rivvet for a reason. It was completely assembled using rivets.