[FTC]: Custom Material and Wiring Questions

[NalaTI]

Originally Posted by electron

Hello all!
While reading the TechnoGuard's Engineering Notebook (Thank you so much for opening that up, btw!),

You're welcome!

Originally Posted by electron

I noticed the use of what looks like stock aluminum C-Channel for angled bar. You can see what I mean here, and here.
Is that really some sort of stock channel/angle bar? Can I just grab some at the home depot down the road, and (most importantly), is it legal to use in FTC?

We did use channel at first because of size, (it's slightly smaller than the Tetrix channel). But then ended up using the square stuff for structural strength instead (which is what's in the pictures) -- you can find it at McMaster (http://www.mcmaster.com/#aluminum/=cra6bh)

Originally Posted by electron

I noticed too that they used Kydex extensively, and I'm wondering if anyone has a good supplier that they would recommend.

Interstate Plastics (http://www.interstateplastics.com)

We used all four plastics BTW. On the final robot, the upper shields were ABS, the lower ones were Kydex, the Hand (and lots of other small pieces) were PETG, the paddles and a few other clear pieces that needed to be strong were Polycarb. We used thin Kydex as covers for parts of the hand as well...

Originally Posted by electron

And one more quick question I have is this:
I noticed that they extensively used custom sensors. Does anyone have a good guide for wiring the protoboard?

On the prototype board we used three potentiometers, 4 switches, and a hall effect sensor. They show how to wire all of these to the prototype board in the Experimentor's Kit manual (http://www.hitechnic.com/downloadnew.php?category=19).

As an aside, on the prototype board, once we figured out how to use this, it became a nice thing, but for most teams, it's not needed. We waited to tackle it until their third year, and partly used it so Gavin (our programmer) would have something new to learn! We also re-built at least four extension boards. If you are going to look into using this, definitely consider getting the prototyping sensor kit. Being able to build it without solder first was a great tool.

We also used four other sensors (two gyroscopes, an accelerometer, and the I/R Seeker) all with the sensor multiplexer (which we used last year).