Chicken wire(Mesh) "Tangled in other robots?"

[Ianworld]

Chicken wire while maybe legal and while i've seen it on robots before doesn't mean you should use it. I don't know what exactly you're using it for but as others have stated above there are better materials for whatever you're doing. Chickenwire gets bent, crushed, broken, torn and destroyed very easily by first robots. Its made for arts and crafts not with 150 pounds robots. So use thin gauge lexan, the nylatron cloth for the bumpers, or any of many other industrial see through materials(check mecmaster for meshes.)

[KenWittlief]

I thought chicken wire was made for chickens?

You dont want people calling your creation the ChickenBot, do you?

Seriously though, unless two robots are completely covered on all sides by body panels (like a car + panels underneath) you can crash just about ANY two bots together and something will get tangled in something (wires, chains, hoses, cables, pulleys, grabbers). Its very difficult to build a completely enclosed robot.

Chicken wire in the right places, more on the inside of the bot where its not subjected to being snagged by anything that brushes against the side of your robot - that would be better than nothing. Keep in mind the only place that robots ARE allowed to make contact with each other is bumper to bumper! Im sure you are not thinking of designing chicken wire bumpers.

One problem with chicken wire is that its hard to properly attach. You cant just put one screw in each corner - you would need to design a frame to hold panels in place.

The easiest thing to use is alum sheet metal: easy to cut, easy to attach, very strong, takes paint nicely, and you can get away with one screw in each corner to hold it in place.

[andrew_4_life]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Seriously though, unless two robots are completely covered on all sides by body panels (like a car + panels underneath) you can crash just about ANY two bots together and something will get tangled in something (wires, chains, hoses, cables, pulleys, grabbers). Its very difficult to build a completely enclosed robot.

Chicken wire in the right places, more on the inside of the bot where its not subjected to being snagged by anything that brushes against the side of your robot - that would be better than nothing. Keep in mind the only place that robots ARE allowed to make contact with each other is bumper to bumper! Im sure you are not thinking of designing chicken wire bumpers.

One problem with chicken wire is that its hard to properly attach. You cant just put one screw in each corner - you would need to design a frame to hold panels in place.

The easiest thing to use is alum sheet metal: easy to cut, easy to attach, very strong, takes paint nicely, and you can get away with one screw in each corner to hold it in place.

Chicken wire is also called mesh.
No we are not using it for bumpers.
Anyways, we need something to enclose our robot(all 4 sides) but needs to be seen through, and also light!
We cannot use lexan for 1 simple reason, we have none!
Why can't we buy some? Because we have no money.
The total amount of materials we bought is substantially under $500.
We pretty much slavaged everything from last years robot.

The chicken wire isn't that hard to attatch, just lots of drilling and screwing.

The best idea for our situation is mesh/chicken wire.

unless someone is willing to provide us with 4 pieces of lexan that is about 36x26