Taking robot on plane

[VexTeamZ]

Most of these are for VRC Robots (I’m assuming you are still doing IQ, correct me if you are in VRC now), but they should still apply.

Flying with Robots?

While I don’t have personal experience, I have seen many teams travel with the Robosource crates. They are relatively thin and lightweight and wouldn’t compare to a pelican case but they work and aren’t too expensive.

Robot Flight to Worlds

You could pretty much keep the robot in one piece, except for in this year’s case i would take the flywheel wheel off to avoid bending the axle. Use dense foam about 2-3" thick on all sides of the robot to keep it steady, and on the bottom, just don;t put foam under the wheels, but under the metal. This keeps the base wheels from bending. This is the method my school has used for the past four years and the worst we’ve had done to a robot was a single bent one-by pressed up against foam. I would…

Flying a Robot to U.S. Open

I would recommend getting the fastest ground shipping you can get. Package it in a strong box or crate, and mark it as FRAGILE in big letters. Remove all axles, gears, wheels, and ideally motors (if you can’t remove motors just make sure to ziptie all of your wires to something, and organize your wires if you haven’t already). If your robot has gear towers on it, secure those to the bottom chassis with some c-channel or something and ziptie down the claw/dumper if applicable (basically just secu…

Transporting or shipping robots to worlds

Some of the teams on long flights from NZ have had issues with it. Not the biggest thing in the world but something to keep in mind when planning the trip.