Suggestions for armor thickness

OK.... We are getting ready to make a splurge and go for some Titanium armor this year...

Hopefully if things work out with the funds...

What would you suggest for thickness on titanium armor for the side plates and front ramps...

Everything is angled down ????? Degrees and will be skirting the floor...

.080 ???
.125 ???

Also, there will be some 1/8" UHMW on top of the titanium so there is no bite on the ramps..

Maybe even another material instead of titanium????

In other words, we need to come up with a solution to the UHMW bending on the side ramps...

I thought titanium would be the lightest but ???

Need some advice here...

FRISCO

we use .030 aluminum for top and bottom plates, but they dont really take hits. So i would go with .080 for the angled sides

i would say save some money and get some beefy .125 7065 or 2024 alu. you would actually want it to chip rather them bend so things don't get distorted

If your covering it with UHMW i would go with al.
Covering UHMW i would go with .08 ti or as thick as weight would allow

Perhaps have a close look at Fluffy 2....ALL tool steel armor.....this is where lots of experience in minimum volume design can come into play. I think that in the future, we might see a lot of smaller robots, once people really take a good look at what works.

We've had pretty good success with .2 Ti, but at that thickness, it has to serve as a combination of armor and structure, otherwise wieght issues will arise and/or lack of a robust weapon (where applicable).

For a non-weaponed bot, it shouldn't be too difficult to use tool steel armor...(see Mike's NCR steel clad wedges)..they look to be very tough.

These decisions need to be made from the getgo, not as an afterthought...

jmo

We have 3 extra pounds to play with so there is a lot of room to expand with....

I think we might go with some 7075 on the armor...

The underneath serves as a structural componet to the UHMW armor only...

We use the UHMW to avoid bite as some people had noticed last year...

It is hard to get a really good bite to flip when the UHMW surrounds the robot...

It gives and bends and rips before it will give an opponent a solid hit....

The downfall is when it bends it sometimes goes under and lifts the robot.....

I figured with some under support and a little gluing to attach, the UHMW will still give plus the under

armor will not allow it to bend too far and lift the robot..

FRISCO

Frisco wrote:

We have 3 extra pounds to play with...

WHAT!?!?!? You have weight to spare? NO FARE! We always, ALWAYS end up going over weight. Our cad model this year was at grand total of 16.4 without fasteners and even after all our scrimping and saving, we're still pushing it.

your gonna need more then a little epoxy to attatch the UHMW it doesnt like to bond to anything

Senai you should try there method of designing for 12lbs lol, are you trying to use P60s this time or is the extra weight coming from the shell?

Have you considered spring steel and rubber? It's worked pretty well on 15 lbers previously.

We looked at that but price wise it was cheaper to go with UHMW and the UHMW also gives a little bit more slide to it for undercutters and FBSers..

FRISCO

Cody wrote:

Senai you should try there method of designing for 12lbs lol, are you trying to use P60s this time or is the extra weight coming from the shell?

Actually, my method is: see what parts i have (electronics, motors, etc) than design my robot around it, adding as many features and redundancies as possible, and then when it's all said and done, find out how much it ways. Hmmmm, maybe my method isn't the most efficient way to build a robot, but hey, it works.

SenaiERI wrote:

Frisco wrote:

We have 3 extra pounds to play with...

WHAT!?!?!? You have weight to spare? NO FARE! We always, ALWAYS end up going over weight. Our cad model this year was at grand total of 16.4 without fasteners and even after all our scrimping and saving, we're still pushing it.

Thankfully, we have Solidworks, so nothing gets purchased or cut until it looks like there is a very good chance of making weight....still, there's always the unforseen

then you have to deal with innacuarcies as far as dimensions and weights of pre-made stuff, so it's best to have them all in hand, measured and weighed before cutting metal.

live and learn....

so many bots have weaknesses due to size, weight problems ,etc.

Back on topic...again, if I was starting from scratch, I'd go with tool steel armor with just enough support as required.

that's why we all have different bots.....different strokes for .....