pic: Rivet...Rivet...Rivet

[gblake]

Ok, so you are going to use a robot to hold all of those rivets together? That sounds overly complicated. Just empty them into a single bigger box.

[gblake]

Once you melt all that raw metal down and cast it into robot parts, how will you connect the cast pieces together?

[DonRotolo]

...and I was expecting frogs.

Just beware those Harbor Freight rivets for high-strength applications; their quality is somewhat less than the name brands. (But for 90% of what we do with them, they are just fine. We just don't use so many....)

[Jason Law]

Glad to see we're not the only ones using Harbor Freight rivets...

[Wayne Doenges]

We have never had a rivet failed. Even when a team hit us at full speed three times (before bumpers). No rivet sheared or broke.

[Zanfardino2892]

lol. I have to say. Rivets stand alone above duct tape and zip ties for a lot of purposes

[FIRSTgirl675]

Wow...that many rivets reminds me of my team's 2007 robot. I heard we went through over a thousand rivets between 3 competitions.

[Dancin103]

Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges

We have never had a rivet failed. Even when a team hit us at full speed three times (before bumpers). No rivet sheared or broke.

hahaha those were the days. you had to build a tank basically.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by Dancin103

hahaha those were the days. you had to build a tank basically.

Bah, hardly... I competed in 2003 and 2004 with chassis made from 80/20-esque aluminum extrusion, and 1" square aluminum tube. No problems... well, we bent the 2004 chassis after a particularly hard head-on autonomous collision, and had to cut a piece out to free up the wheels again.

[Wayne Doenges]

Our 2005 machine was totally Monocoque. Which means we had NO internal structure, just bent aluminum. We took three full court, full speed hits. It bent the aluminum a little, between bulkheads, but did no appreciable damage to bot. Monocoques is STRONG.