Powder coating is great if you can get it, but a decent spray paint job can also do wonders. It's great for us amateur welders and really works if got a decent paintable vertical surface area. The last factor was an issue for many teams I saw this year, with the tunnel height (if they opted for the capability) and regulated bumper colors. This can take some forethought, and I certainly wouldn't recommend sacrificing functionality (hence the issue this season). It's worth consideration though, if not for your image than for sponsor logo visibility.
Another trick is to look durable, in both designed form and fabrication. Rack 'n Roll sticks in my head for this one. As a drive team, we'd rather not go up ramps that looked like they couldn't hold our operator console, much less our robot. It applies to every season, though. If you look durable and effective (hopefully at least in part because you are

), people will remember it.
The other tactic that comes to mind is consistency--over your robot/team/pit/logo/mascot/etc and over the years. We changed our shirts pretty drastically basically every year until last season trying to find something we liked and that was decently unique. I think
we found it, and I'm glad we kept going until we did, but I did see the impact on scouting/name recognition during the earlier years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges
All kidding aside, I've seen too many robots that are very pleasing to the eye but their wiring is atrocious. Spend some time routing your wires in straight lines and use some type of bundling to hold them together (zip ties, string etc...)
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And label them!
