Materials

                                                                  Materials 
                                             
Once a great man named VB Bhandari wrote in his literature book called "Design of Machine elements"in a poetic way

Past experience is a good guide for the selection of materials, however, one should not overlook the possibilities of new materials.

Why selection of materials is important?

Materials are what which decides fate of your bot after taking the head-on attacks. So we have to choose materials wisely and economically(not applicable for everybody :P ) depending upon the weight class of the competition. So here are few materials people generally use...

1. Aluminium
2. Titanium
3. Stainless steel
4. Cast Iron
5. Hard Plastics or Polycarbonate

Hardened Plastic as a shield.

6.Last buy not the least Wood. (yeah,people still use it!!!)
         It's fun to watch wood shattering of in a fraction of a time...only if it's not opponents' ;)

Pine Box(Wooden) shattered by the Last Rites

Frame that holds components of a combot should be hard and resilient.
Later on, update will be on hardening the materials by using various heat treatment processes :)
Trust me...you will start loving material science when you will know what it does to your metal/alloy part/block if it's TREATED well :)


*Tempered Aluminium  - Aluminum is light but expensive and not that easy to cut.

Tempering in a simple language is heating the metal/alloy below recrystallisation temperature to increase it's toughness by reducing hardness. Makes alloy more ductile and hence less brittle.

*Titanium  - Very light and strong but hard to cut(Water jet machining) and extremely costly.


*SS
*Cast Iron
*Polycarbonate - light, inexpensive and easy to cut. Go for it.

Usage of technical terms tried to keep precise.