"Cheap" Robot parts

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Tytus Gerrish

not so cheap, But inexpensive .this year were being very frugile in our operation and ive been desinging with thaT in mind. and a part that costs $150 and you need... say 4 of them .Could run your money out quick

so, i guess im asking what parts, or manufactoring methods do others use to cut costs:?:

heres my Saviour...

theyre 4"x4"x5/16", hold 300 Pounds, and cost .84 cents each

(speelcheck isint up yet. Save me Brandon)

Tytus has a great point. A good designer can make complex mechanisms which require many expensive parts, but a better designer can make the same mechanism with easy-to-get or cheap parts.

For instance, we made this "ball drive" last year. We wondered how to fabricate the core for the balls. The outside needed to be relatively hard, but tacky. We decided that urethane would work well for the outside, so we just needed to make a lightweight, hard ball. We looked to buy some, but had no luck. We were actually looking at having a guy CNC lathe some PVC plastic down to 2 hemispheres, but we found an answer: steel gazing globes. We could buy hollow steel balls from a landscaping company. These balls are called "gazing globes" and usually are glass. Some are steel. They were $6 per ball. We were glad to find a cheap, workable solution.

btw, Tytus... you can copy and paste your post in Word to perform a spell check.

Andy B.

[Sachiel7]

Yep. I totally Agree. In fact we used those bearings back in '02 to pivot our wheels. We eventually took them off (not because they didn't work) but they helped alot.