I went through a bunch of forums and posts and videos for spray painting parts, but a lot of them conflict with each other and I’m not sure if they’re right or not.
What do I need the most in terms of primer, spray paint, and gloss? How much heavier would it make the overall robot?
What colors would look the best and won’t look bad with scratches?
Are there any problems or things I should know before I start painting? Any recommendations? Gloss vs matte?
Can you spray paint plastic parts or do you have to do the thing with acetone?
What parts can or cannot be colored? What about polycarb and delrin?
From my experience, regular spray painting works really well for metal. (If you use the version with inmixed primer.)
We would hang our parts that needed painting from string on a clothesline and painted all sides, then put a fan to blow the part from below while its on the line. Using this method, as long as there isnt too much spray paint, we were able to get from metal to usable painted material in less than 2 hours per part. (note that especially violent encounters will scratch this.)
All parts can be painted, even polycarb and delrin, and for transparrent parts you can sand one side then spray paint that side, being careful to not get any on the unsanded side, and you get a nice finish.
In terms of color theme and scratches, for worlds last year my team elected to go with white and red, as we are also planning to do for MOA this year, because aluminum is basically white anyway, so scratches wont ruin the combo of colors.
In the above photo, our robot is on the left at F-Teir from last year, you can see the polycarb colored red for the hang arms, and the forward crossbrace for the intake also being red. We used white electrical tape to touch up the white.
In the above photo, you can see the intake crossbeam in much better detail. (Ignore the boxing on it, we had to flip it mid scrimmage because it was getting caught in the net while descoring, and we had no spacers.) That was simply a spray painted beam, nothing fancy. You can also see the trapdoor, which is a white spraypainted piece of polycarb, using the same process.
The above picture is what we are doing for Mall of America, which is red anodization. If you want anodized parts, its best to send them to a shop to do it. Its insaneley difficult to do yourself. However, the benefit is it simply makes the metal look like a a color, rather than be covered by one.
You’re good with a paint/primer combo. Just make sure you degrease any metal first (scotch brite pads >>). Additional weight is wayy to variable for a blanket statement, but not much heavier.
Paint is going to scratch. Get a paint pen. The paint is going to scratch. Paint it black so you can use it easier on other robots
Make sure the metal is clean. The paint is going to scratch. Don’t use too much paint because holes will fill and it will get annoying. The paint will scratch
People have painted plastic parts in the past. If you paint the teeth of a gear/sprocket, it won’t work as well. Dyeing works better (as long as the color is darker than the og color)
Has anyone found that the heat involved in acetone dying cracks the gears? I asked chatGPT and Gemini and they both seemed to advise against dying nylon gears. I would like to dye my gears purple for state, but don’t want to waste a bunch of time and parts.
Do you have any recommendations for what paint with inmixed primer works the best for you?
And for dyeing, should I just use the RIT synthetic dye and boil it with water?
