Painting

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by Jon Jack

You'd be surprised actually. I believe 330 paints their robots, after Atlanta their robots still look good.

330's trademark color scheme for the past several years has been to have blue "fixed" parts, like the frame, and bright yellow "moving" parts like gripper claws or arms. When possible we blue anodize the frame and related parts. But if time presses or it will cost too much to anodize (one of our sponsors pays for it), then we have a very similar color of spray paint that we use. The yellow is always spray painted.

We have learned over the years that it really takes very little extra time to paint our parts. The last bit of a build session is used to prep parts to be painted. Painting is the last thing we do before locking up. The parts are allowed to dry overnight and through the next day. When we come back to the shop the next evening, the parts are dry and ready to install and we've missed out on most of those lovely paint fumes.

We have also done the bit about fancy painting on the inside of the plastic covers, but the robot looks more professional when the frame is painted or anodized. So we paint the frame and the covers too.

With the advent of required bumpers, we really don't loose too much paint anymore, so the robots don't look all beat up. I highly recommend having some sort of finish on your robot, other than plain aluminum.

[dtengineering]

We like to use either varnish or sanding sealer, perhaps some Danish Oil, a bit of aniline dye...



We've thought about putting finish on the aluminum frame components, but are worried that if we ever needed to do an emergency welding job at the competition that removing the paint/powder coat would slow things down.

Jason

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

We've thought about putting finish on the aluminum frame components, but are worried that if we ever needed to do an emergency welding job at the competition that removing the paint/powder coat would slow things down.

That actually just reminded me of another type of material finish that looks good on FRC robots (and would be perfect for your situation).

Wirebrushing/Buffering:
Start off with a fine grit buffer or rotary wire brush, and with either an angle grinder or a hand drill and go to town. If you are doing it by hand, a random pattern looks the best. Although if you have a milling machine and want a pattern, put a really fine wire brush in there, and come down and make circles on your part every X inches to make a regular pattern.

[Katie_UPS]

First hand; anodizing looks amazing!

We painted our bumbers but thats it.
I think your painting idea really depends on what type of paint....

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

That actually just reminded me of another type of material finish that looks good on FRC robots (and would be perfect for your situation).

Wirebrushing/Buffering:
Start off with a fine grit buffer or rotary wire brush, and with either an angle grinder or a hand drill and go to town. If you are doing it by hand, a random pattern looks the best. Although if you have a milling machine and want a pattern, put a really fine wire brush in there, and come down and make circles on your part every X inches to make a regular pattern.

Yes, I should have mentioned that we do go for some "natural" finishes, mostly just polishing, however. We've got one team member, who I'll call "Mr. Bling" who is the king of the polishing wheel. We've got lots of shiny aluminum on our machine.

We've also worked with bead blasting for a matte finish, and on our mini-sumo robots that we make in class we'll even mask off the area to be blasted so that we can polish, then mask and blast to get nice graphics without painting.

Jason

P.S. Art... was going to +ve rep you for that great post with all the images earlier on, but have to share some around first.