No material is a miracle material; especially not delrin. Each material choice has advantages in specific applications, and thus should be chosen appropriately. Delrin, like aluminum is on the lighter end of the material spectrum. Like Travis said, high torque and heavy reduction applications are best done with something with a little more torsional stiffness.

Delrin does carry certain advantages. Exhibit A: Weight. For most light duty applications in FIRST, such as drive gearbox plates, and lower torque systems, delrin is quite well suited. Its a fairly soft material, which makes machining the plates incredibly easy and fast. It can be less expensive than aluminum of equal size if you know where to look. Exhibit B: Style. Admit it, a lot of teams care about this. Far more than will openly say so. Delrin can be found in nice clean colors, which can add aesthetics to a robot when chosen wisely. Exhibit C: Machine time. Less units of work for more than satisfactory strength make Delrin a mighty tempting material.

However, if a team doesn't spend their time doing some math and stress calculations, the weight gains will be for naught when a major component shears.

Team 114 had great success in building our drive gearbox sideplates out of Delrin. A few tips from what we learned: Washers. If you don't put washers on your bolts, you'll dent the delrin and lose strength. Machining wise, it's a joy to work with. We were able to produce all of our gearbox plates in house on a tiny little desktop CNC. Weight wise, they turned out insanely light.