After spending a bit of time working with a couple of popular materials, I can now chime in on this topic. A lot of people want to know what the best materials are for building robots. As with most questions, there isn’t really one good answer. I’ve used plexiglass and aluminum on this project and am considering using some wood too.
For someone just getting started, I would definitely lean towards plexiglass or some other plastic. High density polyethylene (HDPE) is one of the more popular types of plastics since it’s very affordable and has all of the qualities you need in a structural component. The main reason that plastics are great to work with is that while they are very durable, they’re also very easy to work with. You can cut them with a small hand saw and drill holes with a small drill. There’s no need for specialty tools. They’re also quite inexpensive and that’s helpful when you’re starting out because you will make mistakes which means you’ll be wasting some material.
Aluminum is great for structures that are going to carry more load than plastic. It’s not terribly expensive if you’re building a smaller robot, but if you build anything with any size to it, more than 1ft x 1ft x 1ft, it could become an expensive venture. It can be cut with a hacksaw, but you’ll need a bit of patience. It’s a very soft metal to work with so anything that can machine metal in any way will have a very easy time working aluminum. The downside? It gets hot and it gets sharp. If you’re not careful, you will cut yourself and you will burn yourself. I have done a little from column A, column B. Another downside is that Aluminum doesn’t play well with other metals. An issue to consider when you’re matching aluminum components and steel fasteners.
Wood is interesting. It’s going to be heavy unless I put in a lot of work to lighten it, but the big advantage to wood is that it can create a very beautiful finish. It’s once again fairly soft, easy to work and has strength to it.
Finally there’s steel. Steel’s heavy, but it’s cheap, strong and you can weld it. That means that if you know how to weld, or know someone who will help you with that, you can design a very rigid structure that will hold up to a lot of abuse since it will become a single component. You won’t need fasteners to hold everything together.if you don’t want to.
So there’s the rundown of common materials to build a robot with from my perspective. There are lots of other materials that you can use. Some are more exotic like carbon fibre and titanium, but those are normally only used in battlebots since they’re so expensive. Most of all, use what makes sense for you. If you have access to a well stocked metal fabrication shop, go for it. If you have no tools at all, go plastic to start and work your way out from there. There’s no “right” way to do it, just a way that will work for you.
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