Using wood on a robot

[Ben Wolsieffer]

Yes, wood is a perfectly good material. There are some teams that make almost all of their robot out of wood.

[kuraikou]

If there's a rule against wood than my team is screwed!

As far as I know there is no such rule anywhere and I would actually encourage you to use wood as it is light, cheap, and strong.

[pastelpony]

Team 51, the Riot Crew, built a pretty mean robot completely of wood last year.

[MrForbes]

We're about half and half this year, wood and aluminum. One of my favorite pastimes during robot season, is trying to get a chunk of 2x4 into the robot somewhere. This year I succeeded again. Yay.

[rich2202]

Just make sure you follow Rule W72 and use wood treated with fire retardant chemicals. We don't want an electrical spark causing a fire on the field.


Just kidding.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by pastelpony

Team 51, the Riot Crew, built a pretty mean robot completely of wood last year.

Neat trick! I don't recall there being any wooden motors, nor have I noticed many pneumatic actuators made of wood. Even pinewood derby cars have steel axles, polystyrene wheels and (usually) lead weights.

Seriously, no reason at all not to use wood for the functions for which it is suitable. Now if I could just convince our head coach - excepting our rookie year, he has vetoed every proposed use of cellulose on the competition robot.

[MarcoVi]

It's not that there's a rule against it. It's just that wood is typically a weaker material than aluminum, and on a game more based on contact, they can suffer.

I think they will really shine this year though, considering that robot-on-robot contact will be almost non-existant.

Good luck on this final build-week!!!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by MarcoVi

It's just that wood is typically a weaker material than aluminum, and on a game more based on contact, they can suffer.

Let's just say that I've seen quite a few wood bots out there, and haven't heard of too many of them getting damaged as much as you seem to think they would be. For instance, 4183 ran over a prototype frame with an older car. The car suffered a flat tire on the second attempt. I think the frame is still going.

Please don't make such a blanket statement. Wood can be nearly as strong as aluminum; it depends on the application and grade of wood in question. Gimme some baltic birch ply of appropriate grade, a laser cutter, and some proper adhesive, and I could probably build a frame that can take a beating that an aluminum bot would show battle scars from, too. I could also build an aluminum frame that would fall apart or break the first time another robot hit it. (6061 T0 aluminum, anybody?)

Also, different materials are strong in different ways. This particular fact is what makes materials engineering so interesting of a field should you choose to go deeper into that statement and enjoy the research.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by pastelpony

Team 51, the Riot Crew, built a pretty mean robot completely of wood last year.

Pretty sure FRC 51 is Wings of Fire, and FRC 58 is the Riot Crew.

I think wood gets the same restrictions as anything else: use it where it's appropriate. Know the strengths and weaknesses of the material.

Wood tends to be a pretty good compositing material-- sandwich it between two metal sheets for a lighter-weight but thicker alternative to metal plates. There are all sorts of uses I can think of for wood.

Originally Posted by pastelpony

Team 51, the Riot Crew, built a pretty mean robot completely of wood last year.

Team 51 is the Wings of Fire. Team 58 is the Riot Crew.

[scaryone]

Originally Posted by pastelpony

Team 51, the Riot Crew, built a pretty mean robot completely of wood last year.

Its Team 58 but thanks for the compliment. Look for a lot of wood this year as well.

[scaryone]

Use Baltic Birch plywood. Advantages often outweigh aluminum. Wood will bend without breaking and bounce back into shape (of course to a limit). We often feel that wood weight vs strength makes birch superior. Also, so darn easy to work with. Over 80 matches last year (and some really rough ones) and the bot looks like it did on bag and tag day.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by scaryone

Use Baltic Birch plywood. Advantages often outweigh aluminum. Wood will bend without breaking and bounce back into shape (of course to a limit). We often feel that wood weight vs strength makes birch superior. Also, so darn easy to work with. Over 80 matches last year (and some really rough ones) and the bot looks like it did on bag and tag day.

Riot crew always builds such sweet (wooden) machines.

[philso]

Originally Posted by lopsided98

Yes, wood is a perfectly good material. There are some teams that make almost all of their robot out of wood.

The wood PWM wires are really slick! The color coding was from the three different types of tropical hardwood used.