What's your material

[Odlaw]

I was wondering what materials your robots are going to be made out of. Steel, aluminum, lexan, composites, etc.

[Kyle]

Some of all three, but you forgot some of the other major possibilities wishes and dreams. Wishes and dreams can hold a robot together just as well as nuts and bolts.

[Ali Ahmed]

Our robot is about 90% aluminum. The gears are of course made of steel and there will probably be some Lexan for our electronics board.

[Bcahn836]

Lots of different aluminum, angle, 80/20, plate, and even some kit metal.
the other stuff will be lexan for electronics and pnuematics, and whatever the wheels are made of.

[Denman]

1/4 inch steel tubing (with thin wall ) all the way man

[Pat Fairbank]

Mostly out of 28mm aluminum extrusion - deanodized and reanodized, of course! Also some 1" square aluminum tubing (1/8" wall) and a bit of lexan here and there.

[ngreen]

aluminum, steel, lexan, kitbot, skyway wheel material, polyethylene, unistrut....that's all so far...maybe wood too

[Alex Cormier]

we have a aluminum, lexan, steel, rubber and so on...

[Stephen.Yanczura]

"I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay.
I sleep all night. I work all day

I cut down trees. I skip and jump.
I like to press wild flowers.
I put on women's clothing
And hang around in bars"

5 years running..... .500" 9ply baltic birch. Thats whats up Elgin.

[Matt D]

our robot is mostly aluminum. our electronics board is made of wood.

[Ianworld]

aluminum(the kitbot chassis) and lexan mostly. The only steel you'll find is where we have to use it. And systemetric didn't you guys learn from last year, aluminum is your friend not steel

[dubious elise]

steel rocks my socks off.
but we do have a bit of aluminum for the gearboxes and electronics board and such.

[Holtzman]

If you want to see a really cool material check this out.

Aluminum honeycomb composite

I stumbled across it one day in the McMaster Carr catalog. (a little light reading material )
Pg 3363
-0.6 lbs/foot^2 for 1/4" thickness
-compare to 3.6 lbs/foot^2 of 1/4" aluminum sheet

I'm not even going to speculate some of the possible uses for this on a FIRST robot. BEWARE the price 8$ -12$ a square foot depending on thickness

[jimfortytwo]

Baltic 1/2" plywood base
welded thin wall aluminum tube for appendages

Six wheel drive, four motors, three speeds: In other words, we insist that wood is a design decision, and not a lack of options.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by jimfortytwo

Baltic 1/2" plywood base
welded thin wall aluminum tube for appendages

Six wheel drive, four motors, three speeds: In other words, we insist that wood is a design decision, and not a lack of options.

Don't tell anyone, but wood is easily machined, easily fastened, and, pound for pound, is stiffer than any material normally used in these robots. It is also elastic and cheap. The lower component of our arm is made up of high-quality zero-void plywood I-beams that we fabricated ourselves. Our bumpers and electronics platform are also wood. We are also using aluminum and steel.

Some of us wanted to use carbon fiber tubes but we couldn't get the material quickly and some people on the team (*ahem*, not me, but some of the students) were leery of using something that they had no experience with. A friend of mine made a 26-foot-long 3-inch-diameter sailboat mast out of carbon fiber, biaxial fiberglass, and epoxy. It weighed six pounds. OK, so his partner helped design one of the carbon-fiber/epoxy America's Cup yachts, but it was still pretty impressive. And he sells the kits for a non-vacuum-bag, no-oven-required building method.

- Rick