[svenw]

You might ask yourself if the belly pan needs to provide rigidity, or if it just needs to house electronics. In the past years, we have always used a box al welded frame and 1/8" lexan. The frame is solid without the lexan.

Because this is our first year welding aluminum we would like the belly pan to provide a bit of support incase our welds are not as strong as they should be. We are welding with our schools millermatic 180 with a spool gun for aluminum, and have been getting some fairly decent welds, but not perfect.

As per your techno, if it is similar to the new one we got here, it can cut aluminium using a carbide endmil

We actually had these guys cut on a 4x8' Techno Router

I figured that the router would be able to handle aluminum, and have been talking about it to our shop teacher about it. Apparently our school board is scared that the school might catch fire if we use a "wood working" tool to cut aluminum, we might just have to do it late on night when no one is around .When routing aluminum do you use 6061 vs a 5052? I think i read somewhere that routing a harder aluminum works better because it does not gum up the router bit.

carbon/s2 glass plywood panel for a robot bottom can be done for relatively cheap

We actually do have a bit of experience working with carbon fibre, we purchased a vacuum pump as well as a sheet of glass, and made some side panels out of carbon fibre last year. It was fairly brittle however, but this could just be because we did not do enough layers, how many layers of cloth would you recommend, and what exactly is S2 glass?

I don't know about perforated plastic sheet, but corrugated plastic is fairly strong and fairly light.

corrugated plastic is fairly strong when pushing it in the right direction, however when you push on it from the side would it not fail fairly easily?

Sven