Question for the metalheads.

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Derek Dudge
Posts: 135
Joined: Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:32 pm

Question for the metalheads.

Post by Derek Dudge »

Hey all.

Very speculative type query. Been thinking ahead to a time I'm ready to try something bigger than ant weight. It will be a fair while, possibly maybe next year, but at some point I would like to try a featherweight.

Anyways, was talking with my housemate about what parts we'd likely use that comply with the low tech building methods we can do at home. I'd be okay with chopping board armour plates and will hopefully be a bit more comfortable by then about the electronics. I'll be practising with ants of course in the meantime.

I would have to get a chassis made. I do not have access to tools nor the skills for that. And so my query. What could I expect to pay to have an aluminium chassis made? I realise there's a billion variables and the correct answer is - it depends. But assuming a standard kind of featherweight size of suitable quality aluminium, rectangular in shape. Nothing too fancy, it would be for a wedge/ram bot with just supports for armour to be bolted to and holes for components to be fastened.

Any of you more experienced builders able to give me a ballpark figure so I can make mental budget plans for the future etc? I looked at a couple of machining sites but they all want details for a quote and as I say all I want to know for now is a ballpark figure for my daydream planning. I have literally no idea of how much such things cost.

Cheers as always!
My robots:

Third Law (antweight) - push/ram bot
Manticore (antweight) - hammer bot
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MarkR
Posts: 375
Joined: Mon Dec 18, 2017 12:46 pm
Location: Reading Hackspace
Contact:

Re: Question for the metalheads.

Post by MarkR »

Join your local Hackspace, Reading Hackspace has a lot of people who can help with that kind of thing. We can weld aluminium (I'm told - never tried) and have a couple of CNC machines which can machine alu, as well as the more conventional power and hand tools.
Robots: Betsie - RaspberryPi controlled flipper bot with gyro stablisation - too clever for her own good?
Stacie - tidy flipper; 4wd driven by hair bands
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