What does your team use to make the clovers for tetras?

[PVCMike]

We got a plastic Mud Flap from a tractor trail from our advisors shop. Tough, easy to manipulate, cheap. any local Truck Shop should have it. Make sure its plastic though ans not rubber.

[Joe Menassa]

We used the sheet of HDPE from the 03 & 04 fields. The stuff works great and we have plenty of it.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Originally Posted by JoeM121

We used the sheet of HDPE from the 03 & 04 fields. The stuff works great and we have plenty of it.

I'll ditto that. I think we began using that last year as scrap for projects and we pulled some pieces out of the junk bin and it works great. In fact, they almost have the same qualities as the kit clovers.

[KTorak]

We used Lexan, and heated it up with a heat gun after making the tetra so it didn't crack and break.

[Anthony Kesich]

We used Wal Mart. We found small cutting boards for 89 cents, bought most of the stock and brought em back. They were just big enough to cut two clovers out of. so $1.78 plus tax for 4 clovers, bot bad. The only problem was they wrre thick, so we had to use a heat gun (actually I lie, it was a blowtoarch) to melt them. Felt kinda funny after they caught on fire a few times.

-Tony K

[RoboCat05]

My team used .032 aluminum sheeting. It worked great. Thin enough to bend and strong enough to hold the structure together. Cheap and easy to do.

[Spikey]

We used some cheap flexible plastic, unfortunately our robot has been making quick work of the connectors, duck tape has become a new favorite.

[Cyberguy34000]

We tried making the center Tetra by using only the clover leaves included with the kit. We wanted to see if we could save some time by not machining out the parts in the manual. Wow was that was flimsy . So then we thought that aluminum might be stronger, so we rebuilt everything with the plastic clover leaves doubled up with a aluminum cloverleaf cutout. It helped a bit but not enough, so then we added aluminum braces and the thing was fine .


But anyways... Aluminum is an excellent substitute, just make sure to round off the edges or duct tape them so they aren't too sharp

[DaSpyder]

we used three button backs and pop riveted them together into a trianglular shape. works pretty good and bends pretty good.

[falconmaster]

1/8 inch clear lexan works for us too!!

[dhitchco]

Elsewhere in this forum was a discussion about using plastic tie-wraps as the corner connectors especially for the goals; not the movable tetras.

Just drill holes through the ends of the goal pieces, thread a long nylon tie-wrap strap but leave them loose. Once the entire goal is put together, you can "cinch-up" the nylon tie wraps to make the structure rigid.

That way, you save the cost of the PVC end caps (which seem to be in short supply) plus you have less labor to assemble and a lot less time to dis-assemble when done.

[Whiteviper]

lexan works great, but make sure when you buy the caps you get flat ones, we just got some rounded ones they still work but not nearly as nice as flat ones in the kit.

[sporkytherobot]

We used frisbee's but they started to crack, so we are using the tops to 5 gallon tubs. they are working out fine. They save us a lot of money.

[Pin Man]

we bought more... enough for 20 tetras... like 15 bucks a piece or set or something... in the end about 1000 bucks we are wasting for 20 tetras...

[FIRSTnameisJay]

the best stuff to use is just some 1/8'' lexan that you can buy at home depot or lowes the stuff is fairly cheap and fairly nice to cut