Interesting material usage?

[Gdeaver]

In some parts of the world bamboo is a structural material. Anybody ever use it on a bot?

[Mr. Tatorscout]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

In some parts of the world bamboo is a structural material. Anybody ever use it on a bot?

Team Tators used Bamboo from my garden in the CalGames 2013 offseason as a frisbee blocker cheesecake for our partners. Covered it with pool noodles and folded it over with a net inside. Provided the perfect combination of inexpensive rigidity and flexibility. Loved the look on the slot feeders faces when they saw us installing it!

[cadandcookies]

First team to find a use for pure sodium on their robot gets disqualified for unsafe materials.

[holygrail]

I really wanted to use casting material, like the kind doctors use when you break your leg. It is a strong, lightweight fiberglass that you can mold to any shape after you get it wet. Dries as hard as a rock, and I doubt that the robot will care too much if it makes it itchy.

It even comes in a variety of colors.

[Tyler_Kaplan]

Team 2085 used Urethane Round Belting. We would cut it to length, drill a hole in PVC pipe, and then use a blow torch (or heat gun if we were in the pits) to melt it into the PVC. In some cases the bond was so strong, that when we tried to take out the pieces of Urethane, it took pieces of PVC with it! And plus we can get it in our team's colors .

Here's a link to the material:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#round-belts/=rjfos8

[lamk]

Plywood, masonite, duct tape, cardboard and hockey stick( we're canadian).
We win the Canadian western regional.

[Caleb Sykes]

4536 is looking to add some memory foam (or whatever the Target equivalent is called) to improve our catching ability for championships.

[brennonbrimhall]

While the majority of our robot is rather conventional aluminum tubing, our catcher panels are rather unique. As mentioned in our Behind the Bumpers video, we use fiberglass rods (like the kind you use to mark your driveway in the winter) to support a combination of bumper cloth, syrofoam beans, and shelf liner.

[Tyler2517]

I don't know if corrugated aluminum counts but we use it in some applications.

[Lil' Lavery]

1712 has a screen door and memory foam on our robot this year.

[RamZ]

After the LA regional we figured out that we needed a rachet for our intake wheel. We didn't have one lying around, so for the Las Vegas regional, we had a racheting wrench attached to the wheel. (It worked like a charm)

[BJT]

We needed ballast for the rear of our robot last year so we used a 7 pound 1" thick piece of steel that I had been using for target practice. Most likely the only FRC robot ever with a 50 BMG bullet hole

[kuraikou]

We used ABS tubing (sewer pipe) as our intake roller this year, and we laser cut our own plywood gussets to hold our robot together.

[RobotDoktor]

Our shooter has surgical tubing on it, not for power, but to make the arm come down after a shot.

[Mschmeh144]

We used Tetrix kit parts on our 2014 bot on some of our axles