is fiberglass legal to use on a first robot?

[Norm M.]

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

Fiberglass is actually brittle (I found this out from experimentation) It can break of in chips or even form finite cracks due to minuscule air bubbles that weaken it.

The landing gear on my airplane is solid fiberglass. Not brittle. Also the main spar.

Fiberglass is a very generic term. A lot of people think of the polyester resin and chopped glass. In airplanes we use woven cloth and a two part epoxy. This epoxy has a much greater pot life, and gives you time to smooth everything out.

A couple sources for materials to learn with: Wicks Aircraft and Aircraft Spruce have a composite kit which includes a manual from Rutan's plans. The kit includes epoxy, cloth, different types of foam, and some flox and micro balloons. Another source for epoxy and cloth is at West Marine stores. The West System epoxy with slow hardner works quite well.

We have used fiberglass laid up over a large salad bowl (about 4 layers of 7 ounce cloth) to make 'hands' to grasp a large ball. 2000 game, maybe? We also used about 12 layers to reinforce some plywood to make a spring as part of a ball thrower mechanism.