Is powder coating and annodizing worthwhile?

[PAR_WIG1350]

According to the wikipedia article on anodizing, the dyes can be screen printed on to create patterns/designs/images. Has anybody experimented with this? it sounds cool.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

Some many take this the wrong way or overexaggerate this but: A powder coated robot has an advantage of getting picked over a non-powder coated robot, for me atleast. Depending on the depth of the regional, your third robot may just be playing defense and won't be asked to score much. If the regional is very shallow, you may just want your 3rd partner not to lose you the regional (with red cards this year, this was a factor). So, you essentially want a smart teams that understands the rules and won't get penalties or get in you and your scoring partner's way. If a team took the time and effort to find someone to powder coat and scheduled it, the team is probably more likely to be smart, to read the rules, and think about strategy than an equally good robot but looks messy and sloppely put together. Its a very minor factor in the grand scheme of alliance selection, but there is a practical advantage to powder coated (or just a clean, good looking) robot. (This can also be applied to pit organization, team shirts, team cheers, interaction with team members in the stand...your preformance on the field is not the only thing that matters in getting selected, especially as 3rd robot).

Teams that pick partners on superficial criteria, such as paint, are most likely teams that aren't going far in the elims anyways.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

Teams that pick partners on superficial criteria, such as paint, are most likely teams that aren't going far in the elims anyways.

I think you missed his point. I can see what John is talking about.

If I'm about to select a third robot for my alliance, and I see two teams with similar scouting data, and I know nothing more about them, I too would be inclined to pick the robot that looks more professional. It hints at the possibility of a more professional team overall. This leads to the possibility of a better pit crew and overall competition team. More professional looking doesn't have to mean painted, just neater and more organized/polished team.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

Teams that pick partners on superficial criteria, such as paint, are most likely teams that aren't going far in the elims anyways.

I wouldn't consider it superficial.

When it comes to a 3rd robot at regionals, often it's a darn hard choice if you're one of the higher seeds. It's usually less about ability, and more about their chance of breaking down.

Our scouts will track teams via data watching the matches, but myself, the pit crew, and some of the scouts will also make note of our perception of team's build quality, battery setup, tool setup, pit organization, etc. as we walk around the pits.

When you're looking for a robot that can drive from point A to B, and more importantly *finish* the match, these factors do weigh in.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I think you missed his point. I can see what John is talking about.

If I'm about to select a third robot for my alliance, and I see two teams with similar scouting data, and I know nothing more about them, I too would be inclined to pick the robot that looks more professional. It hints at the possibility of a more professional team overall. This leads to the possibility of a better pit crew and overall competition team. More professional looking doesn't have to mean painted, just neater and more organized/polished team.

While I agree that with 2 even teams (through scouting) the better painted might be the better choice.

That said, however, My point is that XaulZan11 talked about teams with painted robots being smarter ...

If a team took the time and effort to find someone to powder coat and scheduled it, the team is probably more likely to be smart, to read the rules, and think about strategy than an equally good robot but looks messy and sloppely put together

... when it may have been smarter not to spend the time powdercoating and instead had more driver practice / robot tweaking.

It appeared to me that XaulZan11 assumes that looks = quality, when that may not be the case.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I wouldn't consider it superficial.

When it comes to a 3rd robot at regionals, often it's a darn hard choice if you're one of the higher seeds. It's usually less about ability, and more about their chance of breaking down.

Our scouts will track teams via data watching the matches, but myself, the pit crew, and some of the scouts will also make note of our perception of team's build quality, battery setup, tool setup, pit organization, etc. as we walk around the pits.

When you're looking for a robot that can drive from point A to B, and more importantly *finish* the match, these factors do weigh in.

You posted while I was posting

Paint jobs are superficial.
They do not score or provide defense.
And it doesn't add to (very many) strategies.
It also has little to do with robots breaking down, and in fact they may be more prone to breaking down since there was less time to tweak the robot (It was at the paint shop geting annodized after all).

Paint jobs are a luxury ... one that many teams (mine included) typically cannot afford (both economically and timewise). The only game I required some paint on our robot was 'overdrive', because I knew that we would not be able to see the robot below a specific level (middle barrier), so I had 2 posts painted different colors (we could see them over the barrier and they told us location and orientation).

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

You posted while I was posting

Paint jobs are superficial.
They do not score or provide defense.
And it doesn't add to (very many) strategies.
It also has little to do with robots breaking down, and in fact they may be more prone to breaking down since there was less time to tweak the robot (It was at the paint shop geting annodized after all).

Paint jobs are a luxury ... one that many teams (mine included) typically cannot afford (both economically and timewise). The only game I required some paint on our robot was 'overdrive', because I knew that we would not be able to see the robot below a specific level (middle barrier), so I had 2 posts painted different colors (we could see them over the barrier and they told us location and orientation).

The paint itself provides no substantial point scoring advantage, but it's more often than not when you see a robot that is just totally decked out and color coordinated, it is a reliable robot made by a team that has their act together. Sure, I've seen powdercoated robots that perform poorly, but it's usually not the case. Especially when you're specifically talking about late round alliance selections at regionals.

The former lead mentor of 973 thoroughly believed that powdercoating had zero competitive advantage, but he loved my introduction of it to the team. Why? Well, before then on 973 getting a single robot done and shipped was considered success. The students on the team, and many mentors, doubted the group's ability to make two robots, and powdercoat the competition one. When it happened, it was a great lesson to the students in setting and achieving goals. Deciding to powdercoat was almost a symbol to the team of the greatness we were pursuing.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Our scouts will track teams via data watching the matches, but myself, the pit crew, and some of the scouts will also make note of our perception of team's build quality, battery setup, tool setup, pit organization, etc. as we walk around the pits.

Strangely enough... we've found bumper quality to be an almost 1:1 indicator of robot quality. This year it seemed like whenever we scouted a robot we didn't know much about we could guess how they'd perform during the pre-match just based on how well their bumpers were put together.

Professional tight bumpers = the robot will probably perform well this match.
Shoddy loose bumpers = the robot probably won'r even link up.

I wish I had kept stats on this, but it was a surprisingly accurate indicator (with a few notable exceptions in both directions).

-John

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

It appeared to me that XaulZan11 assumes that looks = quality, when that may not be the case.

Obviously I'm not going to pick a team that can barely drive but has nice powder coated over a team that can score 3 tubes a match but looks like crap. But, if the decision is between two teams with 6 wheel drives and similar driver abilities, the team that has a powdercoated, more organized looking robot, more organized pit is *probably* less likely to not understand the rules, get penalities or break down. Of course I'm not saying a good paint job causes a team to not to break down, but I think it is correlated with not breaking down. If a team takes the effort to make their robot look good, they are probably more likely to understand the rules and have a better built robot.

Midwest last year was very very shallow with a lot of teams just struggling to drive. There were probably only 10-12 teams that could kick balls over 1 bump and only a few more who could consistently score from the first zone. Once we knew we would be one of the top seeds and had the top seeds pretty well ranked, we knew we needed to find a team that simply wouldn't hurt us by breaking down or causing penalties. 3352 stood out as a basic kit bot, but appeared clean and well built and had an organized pit. So, we picked them after picking 16 (who lost Kansas City earlier that year due to penalties by their 3rd partner) and won the regional. 3352 never broke down and never got any penalties and did everything we asked of them.

Again, these factors are like the last resort tie-breaker. Of course, we have extensive scouting data to make our decisions, but when your in a shallow regional/district and your picking the 22-24th best robot, and you simply can't decide between a couple of teams, these factors, such as powdercoating, do matter.

[waialua359]

If teams choose to powdercoat, I see no reason why it should ever be frowned upon, regardless of the lack of correlation to robot performance.
Same goes for neat/clean wiring, nice team panels, embroidered team bumpers, etc. etc. If a team has spaghetti wiring, but never fails to lose connection ever in a competition, do we frown upon the cleaner one?
If its pretty and appeases the eye, and teams can afford to do it at no cost to other areas of the build season, so be it.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Retired Starman

For a team that's really organized, does good, honest design before starting construction, and can stick with the construction schedule, finishing metal is just another step in the process. It lets the judges know you are on top of things.

Either that or. . . Your robot looks like it was built by adults off in a shop somewhere else and wasn't really "kid-built". I saw one robot this year which was done by a veteran team. It had a beautiful anodized finish on parts that had been CNC fabricated. The robot looked great, until you saw the piece of unfinished 1 by 8 wood, held on with some rather ugly right-angle brackets, that was being used as the minibot deployment unit. It was painfully obvious which parts of the robot the kids had built and which had been done by mentors/sponsors.

...Or it just made it easy to tell which parts were planned in advance compared to which parts were done later in the process. But of course if you want to keep making assumptions about teams and taking pot shots, you could do that too. I saw some minibot deployments which were made out of wood and ugly brackets that got minibots up the pole kind of fast...

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Karthik

...Or it just made it easy to tell which parts were planned in advance compared to which parts were done later in the process. But of course if you want to keep making assumptions about teams and taking pot shots, you could do that too.

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Karthik again."

You know what they say about assumptions....

[Hawiian Cadder]

i think the main advantage to powder coating or painting is that it makes the robot more memorable, and more professional looking. however there are ways to achieve this without spending as much time. i thought that WildStang had one of, if not the most memorable robot this year, and it was not because of the powder coating. a team that has a robot with enough time to think about how the robot looks, and bumpers, typically has more time to practice, unless they have a poor build season and don't finish in time.

[J_Miles]

If you are confident that you won't be making any changes to your design, and you have the time left to do so, powder-coating or anodizing could be something really cool to do; however, making changes to parts that are powder-coated or anodized can leave some nasty-looking scars. Because we're constantly making changes to our robot (or fixing things, taking things off, etc), we don't feel like painting/powder coating/anodizing is the way to go.

We try to keep our designs as clean as possible and use transparent lexan to add a little bit of an asthetically-pleasing aspect to our robot, and occasionally (for example in 2008 with the Bullet-Bill themed hammer or this year with our FIRST Team 2337 decals on our gripper and the Pink Team tribute on our Championship minibot deployer) we add some small visual to our robots. Generally, though, tidiness in design and fabrication can make a robot with little to no "bling" on it look just as professional as the next guy; however, I will admit seeing a robot like 148's Raptor, Armadillo, or Tornado in all black with Red under-glow is pretty awesome and extremely indimidating.

2008 - Bullet Bill
2010
2011 - NERD IV (Ali)

Or maybe I'm cheating: Mr. Dan Ernst's pictures can make anyone's robot look good

[Ryan Himmelblau]

One thing I disagree with in this thread is that you "NEED" to powder coat or anodize to make you robot look professional. Whether you want your robot to be colored or not should be purely up to if you as a team think it would look good. For example, take a look at our robot this year. Bare metal frame, but it still managed to be IMO the most colorful robot out there . Anyway I don't think Wildstang has ever colored our frame. This in large part due to we are constantly tweaking our robot up to the ship date and even after. If we decided that we wanted to color all the changed parts/assemblies (and think of all the colors) it would just add unneeded turnout time of parts for our robot. Plus the weight. It isn't a lot, but when you somehow always end up a tad bit over, every little bit counts (hence the cheese holed frame).