Serious thermoplastic problems!!!

Technical Control System
1

Well, we learned two important things tonight…

  1. Loctite melts thermoplastics ferociously…

  2. The entire control system is made of themoplastic!!!

. . . . . . H E L P . . . . . . .

We tried to lock down all our control panel screws, and it appears that the loctite we used was quite destructive to our entire control system. It is a horror show, and I want to warn everyone about this problem so that you do not make such a mistake.

Every one of our mounting holes on every spike, 884, fuse panel and the robot controller itself are GONE and the sides of all of these pieces are literally falling off. (oh the humanity!)

We sit here almost in tears, only two days from ship at about midnight…with a $1300 order into Innovation First (and another $70 for a maxi-fuse block) all shipping by Priority FEDEX.

Thank god we get to keep our robot controller with us after we ship the robot.

So, please take this warning…learn from our horrible misfortune…ALWAYS READ the WARNING LABEL!

-Quentin
:ahh:

2

I wish you the best of luck in getting your robot back to going. One question though, what type of loctite did you use (red-permanent, blue, etc) or does this matter? I was just wondering as we used loctite on our screws and everything was fine.
-Aaron

3

I believe we used BLUE loctite 242 (medium strength threadlocker?).

It clearly has a warning about harming some thermoplastics. We did use it liberally, so you are probably fine if you didn’t get mass quantities on the plastics themselves.

We are now in the process of stripping off all 7 Victors, and two SPIKEs. It also destroyed our 40 Amp Fuse Holder. (another senseless thermoplastic victim of loctite)

Thanks for wishing us luck…I appreciate it. (and of any team in the New England area has an extra Victor 884 we can borrow, please email me at [email protected] or send me an alphanumeric message on my pager at: [email protected] . We have 7 Victors on order, but they will not arrive until Thursday at the earliest!)

Any help or guidance would be appreciated!

Thanks,
-Quentin

:ahh:

4

do your parts still work? You can mount them with velcro temporarily so you can continue testing.

Be aware of using loctite on lexan also. It won’t melt it, but it will make it more brittle and prone to shattering.

5

Thanks a ton to Team 166 who were able to loan us a couple of 884s to finish up testing our robot. The rest of the parts should arrive tomorrow, averting tragedy.

Here are a few pictures; maybe they’ll remind someone not to apply LocTite liberally on the controllers. (In hindsight, things might have been okay if we had applied them to the screw threads as we were instructed; someone, in the interest of time, tried to just pour it in the holes.)
http://n1zyy.com/lt1.jpg
http://n1zyy.com/lt2.jpg
http://n1zyy.com/lt3.jpg

6

omg, wow thats awful. if you need anything let me know, i have 2 victor 883’s things get desperate

7

i am amazed…the chemical reaction that must have occured astounds me…how long did this take from the time you put the loctite on?

8

One word: Wow!

9

It took about an hour…perhaps two tops. (before we noticed the destruction happening)

-Quentin

10

try to use the covers from last year spikes and victors and if that doesnt work… industrial strength velcro would hold it in place for a while…
Good Luck!

11

Yes, we did receive help from several local teams, and finally received our new Robot controller and 40A fuse blocks. We still have to replace those, but we are well on our way back to normal operation.

Thanks much to the Merrimac and Hudson teams!!!

-Quentin