Castings in FRC

[Ian Curtis]

Has anyone ever used castings on a robot? I realize that there aren't a ton of opportunities where it really makes sense, but it seems like it would be a neat thing to do. I've lurked on Home Model Engine Machinist Forum for a while, and the people there do some insanely impressive castings in backyard foundries. I realize the average school is probably not okay with setting up a foundry in the machine shop, just wondering if someone had done it...

(Apologize in advance for the lost productivity that comes along with combing through HMEM. The finished projects are cool, but the build threads are better!)

[DampRobot]

I'm not sure if this was what you had in mind, but in 2006 one team cast (out of plastic) meccanum rollers. I forget what team it was, but they were featured in the 2006 "Behind the Design" book. With the rise of 3D printing, even printing metal through sintering, I doubt many teams will use casting in the future.

On the other hand, FRC is a wide world with obscure teams that come up with some pretty crazy stuff. I wouldn't be surprised to see examples (especially in early years) of teams using extensive metal casting.

[Kristian Calhoun]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

I'm not sure if this was what you had in mind, but in 2006 one team cast (out of plastic) meccanum rollers. I forget what team it was, but they were featured in the 2006 "Behind the Design" book.

That would be Team 357.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Kristian Calhoun

That would be Team 357.

I just remembered 125 cast resin wheels in 2010 as well. If other teams have done plastic casting I'd love to see that too. Probably more likely to happen than metal casting for a variety of reasons.

[dtengineering]

We cast and machined some aluminum hubs for our wheels one year, if I recall correctly... or maybe it was the ends for an intake roller.

We didn't make a big deal of it.... we had the facilities and it was the quickest/easiest way to get the part we needed.

Mind you, that was "back in the day" before Andy Mark had a solution for everything.

Jason

Edit: Oooh! Does that qualify us for "obscure team" status, or just "crazy stuff" status?

[Tristan Lall]

I've long wanted to try graphite permanent moulds for casting something out of aluminum...but never found an application where it really made sense, and therefore never asked any suppliers for assistance with it.

The trouble is, there's always a riser to deal with in that method, so you either need to be able to tolerate one grossly unfinished face, or have to set it up in a mill/lathe to clean the part up. At that point, especially if your machine is CNC, it would have been simpler to let the machine cut the part from a billet.

Casting gets more and more attractive as you scale the process up. A few years ago, someone wanted to make a whole pile of tank treads, and I suggested that they might try casting the links.

Another thing casting is good at is thin sections that aren't stiff enough to withstand rapid machining. That also goes for things that have undercut sections, because you can use cores to support the part.

[R.C.]

FRC 118 did some plastic casting this year.

I got a souvenir wheel! Maybe someone from 118 could chime in and talk about their wheels. They were really cool.

-RC

[Jeff Pahl]

There was a team in MN in 2008 that had several cast gearbox frames on their manipulator. I can't remember the team number. They ended up removing the entire manipulator assembly due to being very significantly overweight, but that was due to overall system design, not just the cast gearboxes. If my memory serves me correctly, each gearbox was a CIM driving a worm gear assembly, and the cast parts were about 1/2" thick.

I know of several teams here in MN that still have machine shops with casting facilities in their schools.

[Brandon Holley]

This year we cast the urethane "tread" for our shooter wheel. We had a ton of issues finding a material we really liked for our 2006 and 2009 shooter wheels. In 2009 we ended up using BaneBots wheels, and because we liked the grip they provided, we wanted to duplicate their material, but with our own wheel setup.

We went for a wheel with high rotational inertia, so we built a central hub/drum using a thick-walled aluminum tube. We 3D printed a mold, that held the drive shaft of the hub, and left a gap for the urethane to fill in and provide the shape we wanted. We ended up going with a concaved wheel to help ensure the ball was centered as it came through our shooter. Due to this shape, we had to build the mold in 3 pieces so we could get it apart.

One cool aspect of 3D printing the mold was we could add patterns to the urethane by adding them to the 3D printed mold. We decided to add some flare to ours with our team number:


The material worked out great. It had a great amount of grip to the ball, and was extremely robust. We never needed to change or even clean the tread material after an entire seasons worth of matches. I imagine if we ever build a shooter wheel again, or even some kind of intake roller, we may go back to this solution.

-Brando

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I realize the average school is probably not okay with setting up a foundry in the machine shop, just wondering if someone had done it...

Heh. When I went to school, we HAD a foundry in the machine shop. (Of course, that was back in the stone age, so we didn't have metals yet...) Casting metal or plastics is really not difficult and can deliver parts nearly impossible any other way. But, one can design around that if necessary. Go to www.smooth-on.com to see some cool moldmaking and casting supplies

[Richard Wallace]

3620 did a simple casting for this.

Very nice when applied to our elevator.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Richard

3620 did a simple casting for this.

Very nice when applied to our elevator.

Interesting. Considering 118's cast wheels, I wonder if any teams have tried casting their wheels around a hex shaft.

[tsaksa]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Heh. When I went to school, we HAD a foundry in the machine shop. (Of course, that was back in the stone age, so we didn't have metals yet...) Casting metal or plastics is really not difficult and can deliver parts nearly impossible any other way. But, one can design around that if necessary. Go to www.smooth-on.com to see some cool moldmaking and casting supplies

It is true that casting aluminum or other non-ferrous metals in a small shop does not require a lot of complex and expensive equipment, and can be carried out safely at a hobby level. However it does carry dangers that may not be well understood by the novice and it would be best to carefully consider the risks and consult and seek guidance from someone with experience before taking on any casting project. Such capabilities have been absent from many of our schools for some time and the experience needed to perform them safely may have also disappeared. You would be surprised how many people think it is OK to pour a casting over a concrete floor, and do not realize that trapped water in the concrete will cause it to explode if a spill occurs.

Still, I have often thought that casting has great potential for a small underfunded team. If you do not have access to very much machining capability, casting allows you to undertake the production of complex parts that rival those produced by teams who have access to CNC. Also, the raw materials can often be scavenged for little or no investment. It is true that these days AndyMark does have a solution for almost everything. But many teams cannot afford much more than the basic kit of parts. The ability to cast your own wheel blanks or other parts could be a real boon for some modestly funded teams particularly in smaller towns and rural areas without much local manufacturing or commercial support.

Again metal casting needs to be taken seriously, but I think casting may have been an under utilized manufacturing technique within FIRST. This thread has renewed my consideration of casing, and it will be something our team may want to discuss with our local shop teacher. But I know that I personally do not really have the knowledge or experience to supervise such activities right now, so we will really need to do our homework if we plan to undertake something like this.

[Jon Stratis]

If you want to see some cool applications of casting, ask for a tour at a company that makes jet turbines! I was fortunate enough to get tours through two of them when I was in school, and it's pretty amazing the different methods they use to cast parts out of steel to withstand the insanely high temperature inside a turbine.

[JamesBrown]

Interesting, there is a guy on there who has a furnace that burns waste oil, it appears to be made out of a keg (undoubtedly lined with some sort of ceramic) and an old vaccum cleaner. Pretty cool.