FRC sheet metal design and manufacturing resources

[User123456]

So it turns out our team has access to sheet metal bending and manufacturing through one of our sponsors, but we have very limited knowledge about how to apply this to FRC. Does anyone know where we could find more information regarding design of bent sheet metal parts, and the manufacturing or putting together (lol) of the parts on a robot?

[Robo_Whiz]

Hey! Our team has the same capabilities as well. Our sponsor has a metal fabrication shop near us, and let us come in to make some parts. We made our design based off the default KOP drive base, edited into what we wanted in Inventor. Then we took it to our sponsor and he made what we wanted! Easy as that.

Just ask your sponsor. If they have the capabilities you say, they should know how to do it.

[cbale2000]

I can relate to this situation. My team has been using basic milling methods to build our robots for many years using square aluminum tubing and polycarbonate sheets. This year a new mentor joined the team who has access to a local machine shop that he works at (and his family owns) that can, amongst other things, do sheet metal fabrication.
Having never designed for sheet metal fabrication though, we chose to stick with our usual machining methods this year.

[chrisfl]

I'd recommend looking at the designs by 148 and 1114. They use sheet metal a lot and come up with really interesting and creative ways of having it bent to create a part.