Over the years, our team has been trying to incorporate more machined pieces into our assemblies, and I have some questions concerning the machined pieces that many teams in the LA regional are rocking:
Do teams rely on local sources to paint their machined parts?
Are parts pre-painted before assembly, or vice versa?
If we were to paint parts on our own, what would be the suggested medium to do so?
It may seem fairly trivial, but I’ve always believed that one should never underestimate the influential power of appearance to your teammates, your alliance members, and the opposing alliance. Thank you for your time.
Paint them? And ruin that beautiful machined finish? There are plenty of alternatives to painting, for example, powder coating and anodizing. To make our robot look good we use a belt sander to ‘enhance’ some of the more visible parts (like the aluminum angle on our shooter hood for example). This gives it a finish that makes it appear to shimmer* as the robot moves. If you really want to paint it, spray paint will probably give you results quickly and without adding too much weight. The time to paint is when the frame is done, all gears, sprockets, chains, treads, motors, wires, control system parts, pneumatics, electrical stuff, bushings, and bearings, among other things, should be either removed or masked off sufficiently (note: gears and sprockets can be painted, but they should be painted separately after being thoroughly de-greased and cleaned).
*(it is honestly more of a sparkle, but that word doesn’t accurately convey how awesome it looks)
We usually paint/powdercoat our robots as soon as the components are made (usually not all holes are drilled but that’s the way it always happens). In my opinion powdercoating is by far the best way to go. Powder coats are really tough and they usually only take a few hours.
This year we powdercoated our frames and spray painted the rest of the robot.
I’m proud to say that 2815 has never competed with a bare-metal robot. The method we’ve used to achieve this has varied:
2009: Painted red at the district career center’s auto body shop
2010: Anodized garnet in a shop in-state
2011: Wrapped in black gaffer’s tape and garnet racing tape (yes, that’s what it was sold as) in the pits
2012: Spray-painted flat black just outside our shop
In the years we’ve painted, 2009 and 2012, we painted the main assembly once it was put together for final assembly. In 2009, we removed our ball dumper and had just that painted; the unpainted C-Base drivetrain was nearly impossible to see behind the bumpers. In 2012, we decided to strip the entire robot down and painted all the structural metal (C-Base included).
2011’s tape job was a back-up-and-punt move for lack of time in our shop; it was noticeable up-close, but from the distance the field mandates, it’s pretty hard to tell. The tape also saved us time on filing, as it covered many rough edges. The paint came out so much better, but I’d do this if the alternative was a plain robot.
256 had a custom paint job this year! And we mean custom. We painted to bot in around 30 minutes flat. Real paint. Check it out here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/37744?
Alpine Robotics has just gone plain aluminum in the past, but this year we Wire wheeled every single part to give it a buffed look. In combination with the 5000+ holes in our frame it makes the robot look pretty slick from the stands.
Our robot is usually straight aluminum, but to make our robot look nice we have custom stickers made with our sponsors right on them. its not too heavy and you can do whatever design you want.
We got a black powder coat on ours this year. It was our first time ever painting/not being bare aluminum. Powder coats took about a day. It looks pretty good now.
We sent our welded frames and welded pieces out to a local powder coating shop, and our smaller machined parts out to a local powder coating shop. We did spray paint a few parts that were manufactured late. Powder coat is certainly superior over paint.
