I’ve tried to avoid using anything other than “standard” Vex gussets this year, but some parts just need the extra strength that a triangle gives you. My question is, how do other teams handle making gussets? The fastest way I have found to make them accurately enough to fit onto a machined hole pattern is to use the table saw to get outside dimensions, clamp ~10 at a time together and mill the holes, and use a bandsaw to get the final contours. The whole process takes about 3 hours to make a set, but requires an experienced member’s constant attention and takes up valuable mill time.
We have tried printing out the gusset and gluing the paper to aluminum before drilling, but it often peels off, and it’s hard to do multiple at once this way.
My team has access to a waterjet through one of our sponsors, so we send out a fully laid out dxf and stock to get turned into gussets with fairly quick turnaround. It’s basically as easy as lasercutting, and significantly cooler.
If that’s not an option, a few ideas come to mind. They’ll vary in their effectiveness based on how precise the parts need to be.
- If you have access to a tabletop lasercutter, you can cut out gussets from cheap material such as 1/8" plywood, and then transfer holes onto metal from there. Use a mill to cut out the profile and drill holes. This will obviously be the most precise, but also the slowest.
- Using the above method, you can also probably use a hand drill to do the holes, since you’ll have them punched. Then, use a bandsaw / jigsaw to cut out the shape. I’m partial to a jigsaw, myself.
- Cut out a shape for the gusset from stock however you want, and then clamp it directly to the pieces that need to be joined. Drill through both the gusset stock and the material to be joined in one go, rivet / bolt, and repeat. Your parts almost certainly won’t be interchangeable, but it’ll might also be the quickest method.
IMO,
I would just fundraise a little more and pay a shop to just do them for you. One year we paid a shop to waterjet about 200+ parts in various sizes and did about 1.5 sheets of work and came out around $800. This rate was a discounted rate for high schools, since then we have just found sponsors to help us out.
We have access to a CNC machine (is there a difference between a CNC router and a CNC mill, or are both the same), and the final product of the gussets we make with it is fairly decent after some deburring.
I’ll +1 this. Being able to offload gussets to a third party really helps our workload during the season. We have a laser cutting sponsor up here that usually has 24-48 hour turn around time on parts. We usually have most of our gussets and bellypan done on the laser.
If you need to make gussets in house, I believe most time efficient and cost effective solution is CNC Router. We love the Velox 5050 CNC Router and it does wood, plastic, aluminum sheet no problem. With some patience it even does aluminum billet fairly well! (We made some custom 7075 #35 chain sprockets this year on it. Worked great!) it’ll set you back 6k, but it’s a great tool that is fairly easy for students to learn and get good at.
Before we had access to these resources, the paper drill template was a good go-to. If you are making a similar hole pattern to to the vex gussets, you can always use the COTS gusset as your hole template. I will often use an old gusset lying around as a drill template when prototyping or making parts quickly.
Hope this helps!
-Mike
Let’s say you only need a few custom gussets, and you don’t have access to a CNC, water jet, or other machine shop. Here’s what my team has done.
-CAD the part.
-print a 1:1 drawing (full scale, in other words) onto paper.
-using spray adhesive, attach the drawing to a piece of sheet metal.
-cut out the part carefully on a bandsaw.
-sand and file the edges.
-using an automatic center punch, line up the holes.
-drill out the holes using a drill press.
-remove the paper and clean the part.
This year we are cutting gussets on a X-Carve CNC router. 500mmx500mm unit. Bought a base kit and sourced other components to keep the cost down. Have about 700$ plus some end mills in it. Took some time to learn the process to get good cuts. It’s great for making gussets. Our side plates for the tank drive module were done by water jet. Even if our router was big enough to do the side plates it would have taken for ever. We model in solid works. We have been going Solid Works -> Inkscape -> Easel for the software. If we had time to master it we would have used HMS express.
Great advice!
My only suggestion, drill the holes first. Generally, for a gusset, it’s the holes that really matter. Doing the holes first means that, if you mess up, you waste less time making a new one. And we all know there will be mess ups 
-Mike
If a drill press is your only tool, you can use 0.1" perf board as a template, at least for right angles (you can also use it for 37/53 degree angles, you know a 3-4-5 right triangle). Mark the holes you’re going to drill, clamp, and match drill 1/16" pilot holes using the perf board, remove the template, then follow up with your rivet/bolt size. I’ve also used this trick for laying out control panels and LED arrays - nice even spacing with little fuss.
Have you been cutting aluminum on the x-carve? How is that working for you?
Clever, definitely adding this to my bag of tricks.
We use CAD, dial calipers, a band saw, center punch, and drill press. It is not a fast process, but it is successful about ~70% of the time for simple parts like this, and give our students some good experiance.
This is, in my opinion, one of the big drawbacks of pre-machined holes in parts. It’s rather time consuming to get everything to lineup properly when you have to make anything custom to interface with it. It’s probably the biggest reason my team has moved away from pre-machined holes. Everything we use is simple extrusion, then you just clamp your gusset on it, drill a couple holes through both pieces at the same time, and bolt/pop rivet it in place. Your holes always line up that way, and if you want a nice clean look you just need to properly mark your spacing on the top piece before you drill.
We get some free waterjetting through one of our main sponsors, Caterpillar. However, the slow turnaround time for waterjet can be very limiting. We recently got a very simple (and very unforgiving) tabletop sheet router, for doing quick mockups and prototypes. It’s very sensitive to calibration, and basically everything else, and it isn’t nearly as accurate as waterjetting. However, it’s nice to be able to whip up a custom gusset out of MDF in a matter of 10 minutes, to make sure it fits the way it should.
We have been cutting .125 Al 6061T6 on the X-Carve. It does take some dialing in to cut AL. We need to do some mods to be able to cut faster or with more precision. For gussets it’s fine. For real precision we need to go to true cam software. Something to master after the season.
Good to know. My team recently won a grant for the 1000x1000 x-carve, it just came in and we haven’t assembled it yet. Did you upgrade the router that came with it? Our main shop mentor seems to think it will not cut aluminum well enough even for gussets and things.
In a pinch I will work with the students to print a part 1:1 scale and use it as a direct template. Tape it to the part, use a punch to mark the holes and then head to the drill press and bandsaw.
Mcmaster Carr has a nice set of inexpensive brackets you can buy that can work out for you.
A tool that is a great thing to have is a cleco tool. It’s a temporary hole clamp used to align parts when we match drill.
+1 to Cleco Tools! We have three Cleco Pliers and hundreds of Clecos. Everything we assemble gets cleco-ed before being riveted together.
-Mike
Thanks for the ideas! We have a sheet metal sponsor, but they do not like to do things other than 90* angles for the sides of gussets, so I was hoping there was a quick way to make them by hand. They also only do 1-2 big orders for us each season as it’s faster for them to do that than a bunch of orders for 4-8 gussets each.
Normaly we do what Mrnoble said (print, drill, cut) but the paper peels sometimes, and it tends to be rather slow if we need to make 16 or 30 gussets.