"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - Buckminster Fuller
I love this quote, as it perfectly sums up my design philosophy. However, I define "beautiful" in the scope of engineering as to mean not only cosmetic eye-candy, but also an incredibly efficient or minimalist solution. A
Segway is a beautiful machine, the
Millau Viaduct is a beautiful bridge, the Audi TT is a beautiful car.
You'd be surprised at how easy it is to make your robot look a lot better with only what I call the "extra 10%" - if you are going to do something, then put the extra 10% effort in up front and make it work right and look good the first time.
Here are a list of ways to make your robots look much better:
Spray Painting:
While spray paint on any exposed metal surfaces can and will scratch easily, on plastics (especially polycarbonate), spray painting on the inside face works really well. You can also do layered painting to make color gradients; and by masking off parts of the Lexan you can do all kinds of nice paint schemes.
If you are going to spray paint any metal parts, be sure to sandblast them first if you can. This will remove all kinds of grime and impurities from the surface, and it'll provide a good base to start off of.
Sandblasting:
Once you are done machining all those aluminum parts, wash with acetone and sandblast 'em. When you are done sandblasting, wash them a second time with acetone and then spray them with a clear coat to protect the nice sandblasted finish.
Vinyl Cutter:
Design your team and sponsor logos in any vector-editing program (such as Adobe Illustrator), and export them to the application which controls your vinyl cutter. From here, you can have the vinyl cutter basically cut out huge stickers in the shape of your vector files which you can stick to anything flat. Polycarbonate is a good choice for vinyl.
Plotter:
If you prefer Photoshop over Illustrator, then design large side panels for your robot using any image editing program of your choice. Then with a wide-format plotter, print them out. From here, either you can laminate the panels (I suggest the thickest possible lamination, as the thin ones can easily tear on FRC robots), or glue them to the inside of thin polycarbonate sheet.
Powder Coating:
This is my personal favorite - so much so this summer I'm building my own powder coating oven (3' wide x 2' high x 6' long - e.g. large enough to do full-length arm/elevator or a complete welded robot frame) for powder-coating parts in-house. Powder coating is simple: clean the parts really well (sandblasting works), spray the electro-static powder onto them, then cook them in an oven to cure the powder.
It's safe, environmentally friendly, and the finished parts are moderately scratch resistant. The only real downside to powder coating is that it typically adds about 0.003" to all parts, although you can "block off" sections of the finished machined parts to prevent powder from going into bearing holes and the like.
Anodize:
Anodizing is a great way to protect your parts and have them look sweet in the process. I wouldn't suggest doing this in-house, unless you have a chemistry teacher involved with your team, as I wouldn't really recommend storing the kinds of chemicals involved here in your robotics shop/lab/classroom. Anodizing is a chemical process in which the parts are first cleaned, then etched in a caustic solution, then desmet, then anodized in sulfuric acid, then dyed in the color, then sealed in a heated solution.
Anodizing typically adds up to 0.001" onto the parts.