Page 175 - Robot Builder's Bonanza

Chapter 14

Rapid Prototyping

Methods

ot every robot needs heavy- duty construction. Sometimes, all you’re after is a general
Nidea that your design is workable. Rather than use traditional construction with wood,
plastic, or metal, you build a “rough- cut” prototype of the robot and use it for testing purposes.
This concept is known as rapid prototyping, and it borrows from a wealth of other tech-
nologies to provide you with a fast- track method of building your bots. Construction takes
less time, and it’s less expensive. While rapid prototyping is most useful for testing the merit
of a design, it can also be used to build finished robots that don’t require sturdy long- life
construction.
In this chapter you’ll learn about mechanical hardware prototyping using materials that are
lightweight, cheap, and easy to cut and drill. Keep in mind, the resulting bot may not win any
beauty contests, and it may not last long— fast prototypes can be rather delicate. But you
won’t have spent much on constructing it, and at the end you’ll know for sure your idea has
merit.

Selecting Lightweight Robot Materials

At the core of rapid prototyping is lightweight yet reasonably strong materials for the body of
the robot. To reduce the time required to produce the prototype, you want to select a material
that is easy to cut and drill, perhaps even with hand tools. So we’re looking for stuff that can
be cut with a knife, a razor saw, or even a pair of scissors. Candidate materials include heavy-
duty cardboard, corrugated plastic, laminated paper and foamboard, and others.
Collectively, these are often referred to as “substrates,” because they’re used as an under-
layment for things like indoor and outdoor signs, walls for temporary booths at trade shows,
and posters for hanging up on your wall.
Substrates often (but not always) have multiple layers of complementary materials— each
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