Our team was offered prime space at the entry way to our school to highlight the robotics program a while back. We finally got around to building a large trophy case this summer and posted a few build pictures on our Facebook page.
I thought the CD community might be interested in a few more of the details behind the build though and am cross-posting here.
Primary Goals
- Increase visbility of program to school visitors
- Use build methods and tools that cross-train robot skills
- Free up space in our shop
Our campus is actually quite nice, and serves as a host site for a huge number of school district events each year. Additionally, we have found it is difficult to convey “robotics” to our diverse student population at the school effectively, and both we and our administration felt a permanent display with the actual robots would help. After walking through the main office, this is now the first thing any visitor sees in the school.
We chose to make the case primarily of aluminum profiles, and used techniques such as riveting, match drilling, tapped holes, and precise chopsaw work for the bulk of the frame. It did cost a bit more and might have been more economical to do a base frame of welded steel, but would have reduced student involvement as none are currently welders. We also used CAD to do much of the initial development, though the actual installation was built to fit as the existing space wasn’t perfectly square/straight.
The case is an L shape, with about 60 square feet of interior floor space. It made sense to elevate the floor to bring robots to viewing height (and we may consider adding small podiums under individual robots as well in the future). This generated a little over 100 cubic feet of space under the floor, so we made the wood panels relatively easily removable for long term storage like additional material stock or old game pieces that we access less frequently.
In the future, we will likely add a large TV that can drive anything from recruiting presentations, to team information, to Twitch streams of robot events when we are competing.
Construction
The base construction was primarily aluminum profiles (3/16" x 2.5 x 2.5 angle, 2.5" x 1/8" square tube, and 1/8" flats (2.5" wide and 4" wide). Some of the exact sizing was driven by local availability, but the general concept is we wanted anything front facing to be brushed aluminum.
We built the frame first, using a combination of custom cut gussets to connect aluminum rails and some of the RevRobotics brackets we had extra of for inside corners. While we could have welded all the aluminum, this method was easy enough and helped us meet our goals of having more students drilling/riveting/clamping/etc on aluminum, just as they would in the season.
The floor was 3/4" MDF, with struts spanning from the front structural aluminum to the back wall for support every 2’ or so. There was little perceivable flex when walking around on it afterwards, so I considered it plenty strong for the application.
On the wall, we had a decent amount of spare plywood and 2x4s from our old practice field elements, and opted to skin both the cinderblock and sheetrock walls/ceiling with 2x4s and plywood, appropriately attached, to give us a robust mounting surface for the future. The walls were lined with black craft felt (~$3 per sq. yard) that was attached via spray adhesive. We might use a silkier fabric on the base in the future to dress it up further and reduce dust tracking.
The shelves were a commercial mounting solution and we used some glass shelving that was spare in the school for now. We left the ability to come back and add either custom shelves, LED lighting, or both.
The lighting was a track lighting solution that gave us point lighting for the robots. We had to compromise on powering it, as we’d prefer to hard wire everything, but the school didn’t want us hard wiring, so we used properly protected extension cords with terminations in junction boxes. The load is extremely light as well at ~100mA per track.
The front facing panels are nominal 0.25" acrylic (actual 0.22"). Each “structural” post basically has a matching aluminum flat that was match drilled to it. We tapped the post, and then added a .25" nylon spacer between each flat and the post to generate a gap. This allowed us to one, keep the outside looking pretty crisp, and two, by removing a flat, slide the acrylic out to access the case. The bottom panels were just 0.25" Luan that we stained to match the wood elsewhere in the school.
Rough Cost Breakdown
- $1400 - Aluminum Profiles
- $800 - Acrylic Panels
- $350 - Wood/Caulk/Adhesives/Concrete Anchors/Misc/Etc
- $250 - Lighting
- $100 - Felt
- $100 - Shelving
- $3000 - Total/Budget
Know the post was a bit long, but hopefully gives a few ideas to anyone thinking about something similar. Again, for more pictures or to follow the team, check out our Facebook page and toss us a like :).
