I’ve seen a lot of teams that print designs onto polycarbonate or acrylic sheets that are attached to their robot. I was wondering how most teams do this. If there is a special piece of machinery that you need then are there any specific companies that someone could suggest?
As far as I know, no one actually prints directly onto the Polycarbonate (Pretty sure Acrylic is illegal by the way). Most people print out Decals and attach them to the Lexan with either screws, tape, glue, etc. I believe 1200 and 1200F had stickers printed that stuck right onto their side plates. You could also spraypaint stuff but you’d want to use a stencil for any designs.
169 and NAR’s Sack Attack robots had extremely cool and professional designs on their polycarb. I’ve never personally contacted or purchased from them, but I believe they got them from twopencildesigns.com/wp/. This seems like it would probably be rather expensive though, so you might just use one of the simpler and cheaper alternatives.
Good Luck!
We have done decal’s two ways. We have done decorative only decal’s by printing them out, laminating them, and attaching them to the sides of the robot (Our round up robot). We also have had a parent who works for a sign company screen print directly to the lexan (Our sack attack robot). Finding someone to do this may be difficult and may be costly, ours was done on the side and donated to us. You could start by talking to specialty sign companies, which is the kind of company where the parent who donated them works.
You can use a laser engraver! We laser engraved plexiglass for our sponsorship logos on my sack attack robot
Are you guys talking about simply putting decals(vinyl Graphics) on plastic to attach to your robot?
I am new to competitions, we are starting a team next month that will compete for the first time this year. Anyway, I am a teacher, but also do t-shirts and vinyl graphics on the side. Id be happy to help if anyone was looking for something like that!
Thanks
I think I read several years ago (i’m paraphrasing here) The way the rule reads is that the polycarbonate can be attached as longs as its “not structural” and used for decorative purposes.
bbrocks88:Id be happy to help if anyone was looking for something like that!
Thanks for the offer, I will keep that in mind! Thx.