Enough buying talk. Let's hear about ghettofab!

[Alaina]

I would say that 814's 2003 robot, Spicy Mustard, was 100% ghetto-fabulous.
Spicy was wooden. Very wooden. The chassis was made of 3/8" plywood, the arm pieces were made out of 1/8" plywood epoxies to high-density foam. The "lobster" claw was made the same. In order to make Spicy pretty, we used wood stain to give him some color, and covered the bumpers with this really UGLY upholstery.

We had a limit button that made the elbow motor stop once it was hit. But the top came off of the button and we didn't have time to replace it. So we bought one of those gardening knee pads, cut out a chunk of it and ziptied it to the section of the arm that hit the button.

Needless to say, Spicy is the most successful robot the team has ever made. We won Judge's Choice and Leadership in Controls, and were regional finalists.

[Conor Ryan]

i have to say First ghetto fab is definetly more creative then other ghetto fab just because of the fact that we can't use duct tape. But I have seen cars with engines held in there with just duct tape and zip ties.

[hacksaw692]

Oh dear... This thread has most definitly been hiding from me.

2002. My rookie year.
We attempted a 4 wheel chain driven trannie. What's interesting is that we didn't bother using any pillow blocks to hold down our shafts. Instead we hand fabricated (hacksaw and drill baby) little 1" x 4" strips of metal that were bent over the ends of the wheel shafts and bolted directly onto the chasis. This provided for slack in our chain and really bad alignment. To make up for the slack we placed a thick piece of rounded off, I think it was some kind of polycarbonate plastic, directly against the chain as a tensioner.

Something like this would be able to be driven around rather gently on tile or contrete. But of course this was a robotics competition. Instead of tile, there was carpet and instead of gentle driving... well yeah 2 minutes and what are you going to do with a robot? So the chain would just pop right off it's sprocket and we'd be sitting ducks.

I'm still wondering why we bothered to build it that way (hmm maybe it was a weight issue), but what did I know? I was a rookie at the time. Unfortunately, this is the sole reason why 692 likes to avoid chain drives.

Minor gehettofabulousness: 2003. Robot's team numbers were shaped out of electrical tape and attached on with (colored!) zip ties.