[Jon Stratis]

I really have to disagree with robself705. Machined parts can make a robot look good, but put those same parts in the hands of another team, and the robot won't look nearly as good.

The biggest thing you need to have a robot looking good is attention to detail, from the beginning through the end. If you're putting something together and you finish by saying "well, that's good enough", it's not going to look all that great, although it may function just fine.

For electrical, wire routing is incredibly important, yet most teams don't spend any time on it and end up with a "rats nest" of wires. To alleviate this, there are a couple of practices every team can do that will really clean things up:
- Making everything co-located as much as possible (on one board, for example) will allow you to spend the time to route the wires properly and secure them with some simple, cheap plastic p-clamps. You can get nice, neat, straight wire runs that way.
- Before you put any wires in, determine one or two "wire highways". essentially, bundle the wires together as much as possible (simple zip ties at regular intervals work great, or you can go with a braided sleeving or, if possible, plastic wire ducting), and branch off that main bundle when needed.
- Getting wire for your power needs that has a relatively stiff jacket lets you put some nice, semi-permanent bends in the wire, which can help a lot with routing.


Unless you really want to show something off, you can generally cover most things. This year, our robot has a nice aluminum hood that really makes it look nice (not that things beneath look bad).

Work with a professional print shop for your sponsor sticker, and learn the proper way to apply it to avoid air bubbles. If you have enough room, use a single sticker. A nice, bright sticker with crisp edges and cool logos really helps.

And finally, do some searching on the web and figure out how to make your materials really look good. If you're using wood, you can paint or stain it to look even better. For aluminum, you can spend some time working with it to really make it shine with bright, neat circles in it (polishing compound, a circular wood block, and a drill press). After a full build season, even the best of teams end up scratching up their materials... time for "beautification" at the end really makes things pop.