[Gdeaver]

The material you want to use is fiberglass pultrusuions. They come in the shapes that aluminum does. !/8" wall is what we used but it comes in thicker walls. Mcmaster-Carr sells it. The common pultrusions are fiberglass (e glass) and polyester resin. You can also find pultrusions made with vinyl ester resin. It's a little stronger and more expensive. Team 104 used this for our arm in 2004 and 2005. You can't use the same methods with pultrusionas as with metal. As a rule do not drill holes to mount thing on pultrusions. Clamp them on. Bolts, bearings and other fasteners can be set in the ends for mounting by using epoxy and chopped fiber (carbon or fiberglass). Some teams have used birch ply wood in the construction for cost savings. If you laminate a layer of 6 OZ s glass on both sides of the plywood the result is very strong robot covering at a fraction of the cost of polycarbonate. There are all kinds of uses for fiberglass and composite techniques on first robots. Easy to do, only requires hand tools But there is a little learning curve. Great for fall practice. as a general rule a composite design can save about 25% the weight of an equivalent aluminum part.