Is powder coating and annodizing worthwhile?

[lemiant]

Is powder coating and annodizing worthwhile? Many top teams do it, and yet I can't shake the feeling that consuming a whole days to send parts to the powder shop is a huge cost, when you could have that extra day for driving.

[Cory]

Our manufacturing schedule is such that not everything is ever done all at once.

We make our frames and gearbox plates before we have all our shafts, gears, etc finished, so time spent waiting for anodize/powdercoat to come back usually does not come into play. Sometimes it does however, and you're already committed so you just have to live with it.

We've been lucky enough to have a powdercoat sponsor who normally turns around our parts in under 8 hours and an anodize shop that usually is able to do our parts fairly quickly as well.

It definitely makes a huge difference in terms of making your robot look more professional.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Cory

Our manufacturing schedule is such that not everything is ever done all at once.

We make our frames and gearbox plates before we have all our shafts, gears, etc finished, so time spent waiting for anodize/powdercoat to come back usually does not come into play. Sometimes it does however, and you're already committed so you just have to live with it.

We've been lucky enough to have a powdercoat sponsor who normally turns around our parts in under 8 hours and an anodize shop that usually is able to do our parts fairly quickly as well.

It definitely makes a huge difference in terms of making your robot look more professional.

How would we go about getting sponsors who will do these for us? I mean, they must expect something in return if they are willing to sponsor a team.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

How would we go about getting sponsors who will do these for us? I mean, they must expect something in return if they are willing to sponsor a team.

One thing I think is standard among powdercoat sponsors is to not ask for colors which are out of ordinary from their production colors (if it is a company that manufactures something). If its an actual powdercoat shop, then you could approach them the same way you do any other company. Offer them advertisement etc.

[Hawiian Cadder]

i think team guss used a type of paint and fooled everyone into thinking their robot was powder coated. they just painted each part as it came off the machine line, and the next day it was ready to go. minimal time down, and paint can look really really good.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

i think team guss used a type of paint and fooled everyone into thinking their robot was powder coated. they just painted each part as it came off the machine line, and the next day it was ready to go. minimal time down, and paint can look really really good.

Us, and many others get same day turnaround with powdercoating.

[,4lex S.]

Here are the situations I think this is worthwhile in:

1) Your robot is going to be competing on the national stage, and you want to be identifiable and memorable.

2) You feel that having a more professional looking robot will bring in more sponsors/new members/supporters.

In Formula SAE, most teams powder coat their chassis. The reason for this is that the overall basis of our competition is to 'sell' our design for a small production racecar. If we didn't have to sell our design, it would be tempting to ignore it altogether to save a bit of weight and time (every gram counts).

Don't let pretty things distract you from your engineering goals, unless they give you some advantage (if it is a non-engineering advantage, it is just as important).

[dtengineering]

For small parts you can do the anodizing in your own shop... just borrow a bit of sulphuric acid from the Chem lab. There are really good instructions on line for setting up your own anodizing line.

I've never felt it wise to paint or powder coat, however, just in the event that you ever need to make an emergency repair using a welder. With bare aluminum your surface prep is pretty minimal... the paint or powder coat would just be one more layer to be cleaned off. Not bad if you've got a power wire wheel, but we don't pack those to our pit area.

Often, however, we would polish exposed aluminum parts, and cover the unpolished parts with painted polycarbonate that could be removed quickly and easily. There was usually at least one student on the team who really excelled at "making things shiny".

Then we realized that we were being silly making robots out of aluminum and switched to wood, where a couple quick coats of lacquer and a bit of sanding take it from looking cheap to looking awesome... but there's another thread about that!

Jason

[waialua359]

How about doing it in-house?

Better yet, train students and have those students train other students once they're an alumni.

5 years and counting.

[ebarker]

Ask yourself "what are we trying to accomplish ?".

Looking good during the competition is a good reason.

Having a nice 'showbot' after the competition is a good reason.

This year we anodized, did graphics and all the rest. Since our regional we have showed it in front of a total of 30,000 across several events. It helps a lot with the roadshow.

Back to your basic question - what are you trying to accomplish ?

.

[sgreco]

It seems that most people are adbising to anodize/powdercoat if you have time. This is good advice, but depending on the resources for your team, it may not be the right choice. My team has reasonable resources, I would consider us fortunate, but we are slow when it comes to building and designing. We've only ever anodized once, and that was for our swerve modules in 2009. For us, anodizing is a ice to have, but we know the build season is short, and until we improve our schedule, we go into a build season assuming we won't anodize.

It's really a matter of what's right for your team. Karthik would tell you to analyze your team's resources, and make sure you don't try what you aren't capable of. This is great advice.

[AdamHeard]

Here's a point I haven't seen raised. Relationship between practice bots and powdercoating.

The fact that we make a practice bot means there is no stress to start assembly of comp bot early in season, we often won't even start until week 5.

[XaulZan11]

Some many take this the wrong way or overexaggerate this but: A powder coated robot has an advantage of getting picked over a non-powder coated robot, for me atleast. Depending on the depth of the regional, your third robot may just be playing defense and won't be asked to score much. If the regional is very shallow, you may just want your 3rd partner not to lose you the regional (with red cards this year, this was a factor). So, you essentially want a smart teams that understands the rules and won't get penalties or get in you and your scoring partner's way. If a team took the time and effort to find someone to powder coat and scheduled it, the team is probably more likely to be smart, to read the rules, and think about strategy than an equally good robot but looks messy and sloppely put together. Its a very minor factor in the grand scheme of alliance selection, but there is a practical advantage to powder coated (or just a clean, good looking) robot. (This can also be applied to pit organization, team shirts, team cheers, interaction with team members in the stand...your preformance on the field is not the only thing that matters in getting selected, especially as 3rd robot).

[Mark Holschuh]

There may be instances where you have aluminum parts sliding on other aluminum parts. You may want to hard anodize one or both of the parts to reduce wear in these situations. I know that teams 2194 and 171 have done this.

[Ryan Himmelblau]

One thing I disagree with in this thread is that you "NEED" to powder coat or anodize to make you robot look professional. Whether you want your robot to be colored or not should be purely up to if you as a team think it would look good. For example, take a look at our robot this year. Bare metal frame, but it still managed to be IMO the most colorful robot out there . Anyway I don't think Wildstang has ever colored our frame. This in large part due to we are constantly tweaking our robot up to the ship date and even after. If we decided that we wanted to color all the changed parts/assemblies (and think of all the colors) it would just add unneeded turnout time of parts for our robot. Plus the weight. It isn't a lot, but when you somehow always end up a tad bit over, every little bit counts (hence the cheese holed frame).