Will plexi-glass work?

[ngreen]

I don't know how physical this years matches will be but last year we shattered the side of a lexan robot in our first practice match (they ran into us). I still have a piece of it.

I would use wood and the aluminum for the kit. You can definitely get something driving and it will cut down on the repairs you will have to do at competition. You can compete if you can make something that can drive every match.

[tenfour]

You all are crazy. Lexan can't be shattered, or damaged. Maybe if you buy it down at the local rip off house home imporvement store, it will.

Horray for Lexan!?!?!?!

[maclaren]

Originally Posted by tenfour

You all are crazy. Lexan can't be shattered, or damaged. Maybe if you buy it down at the local rip off house home imporvement store, it will.

Horray for Lexan!?!?!?!

I have seen lexan shatter but it takes quite a bit to shatter it. The circumstance was in battle bots. A spinning bot got slammed in to the 1/2" thick bullet proof lexan wall and took a chunck out of it the size of a human head. It was pretty spectacular.

But that is way out of the FIRST robotics league.

[Eric Bareiss]

This is team 1038 from 2003.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...gle&picid=3592

[Adam Y.]

You all are crazy. Lexan can't be shattered, or damaged. Maybe if you buy it down at the local rip off house home imporvement store, it will.

Lexan can easily be damaged. The sun is just one of the many things that can and will weaken it. Loctite is another.

[Kaelia]

Polycarb + Heat gun = Messy death. We tried to bend it like that for our control box last year. Oooops.

Other than that, it is a great material to use...however, I don't see why there is so much worry about break-age. The competition this year really isn't as violent as last year's, and I personally think you'll be just fine with Plexi unless you're planning on playing bumper cars with the other bots...

[dez250]

PLEASE DO NOT USE PLEXIGLASS/ACRILYC (sp??). The volunteers and field crew will thank you if you dont use plexi, i personally spent a good 10 mins with another staff member at the NJ Regional this past weekend cleaning up 1/2 a bot's plexi frame that exploded on contact with another bot while in auton mode. It shatters into small shards like glass will and needs to be all completly removed due to the hazard to the game balls...

[ShadowKnight]

as everyone else has mentioned, plexi has a tendency to break..well, more like shatter. If someone so much as touches the stuff...Id' hate to be you guys if you had a match in less than a few hours

[Phasmatis568]

Originally Posted by Eric Bareiss

This is team 1038 from 2003.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...gle&picid=3592

Our entire base was constructed of lexan. With this we managed to hold up against anyone who tried to push us off the ramp.

This year our robot used lexan plating on an aluminum frame. We decided to play king of the hill on the chin-up platform. The lexan on our robot is merely scratched. You dont have to worry about it breaking in this competition.

[Grommit]

I don't want to repeat anything that's already been said... so I won't mention plexi-glass and the fact that it is completely horrible for use as a structural component on a robot.

But I will say something interesting: We have a cart we've been working on, which is motorized, to carry the robot around on. We gave our 12" wheels to team #1043 before we realized that we might have wanted them for the cart. (A good move, they made very good use of those wheels). However, to get to the point, we actually tried replacing those wheels with 12" roughly cut wheels of lexan instead. Ugly, but they could withstand the pressure, and weight isn't an issue for a cart. We will end up putting the pneumatic tires on, but the cart would have functioned, we expect, with the lexan.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

For many years, we used laser cut lexan wheels on the robot. They gave us limited slip on the carpet and allowed some side turning for tank drive. We never had one break but they did wear down.