I am looking for some advice. We are a new team to VRC. We need to figure out a way to make our competition field portable. Does anyone have plans on a rigid foldable design?
Thanks
Doug
I don’t know of any foldable designs(I want to make one now though) but you could switch all of the screws out for thumb screws so that it will come apart easier.
We store our field in 8 foot segments and then have 4 individual 4 foot sections. We transport the individual sections and keep the 8 foot ones at our school.
How portable is portable? room to room or building to building?
So, I am looking to be able to move it from room to room. Maybe in 6’ x 6’ sections that possibly fold up together with a hing system. I want to keep rigidity if possible.
Our team breaks the field down into 12 foot sides. We have 2 wheel dollies that hold all of the sections, which we roll from room to room.
So, we are new… am I crazy to think of building a full base? My thought was that we could build a platform for the field to stay on at all times and then just fold it to move it. I may be way over thinking this. lol
I employ the “Paul Kloberg” method of field setup and movement. Use the thumb screws to unfasten the center section. Lift it out. Put the thumb screw back where it came from. Repeat for all four middle sections. Now go to the corners and loosen the thumbscrews by 3 turns Pop the bracket up, and fold the corner. Tighten the thumb screws to hold it in the folded position. When done you should have four side parts and four corner assembly made up of two field sections connected by the corner triangle brackets. Load the 8 parts into my car. Normally, single handed I can stand a field up / tear a field down in < 15 mins. (*)
Buy Zoro.com G2810823 you need 30, 24 for the field, 4 for the towers and 2 spares.
Initial build. Build the 4’ wall sections. On 8 of them put a single U bracket using the supplied screws, tighten hard. On the remaining 4 put 2 U brackets on the same long side, also with the supplied screws.
Take two of the 1 U sides, stand them up on the long edge, bracket up. Connect the non bracket end with the triangle corner using thumb screws. With a silver sharpy, write B or bottom. Flip over and install the top triangle plate. Repeat for the other 4 corners.
Space corners 4’ apart, drop the center sections in place. They will sit down into the U bracket, the upper brackets get thumb screws to hold them in place.
(*) One of the cool things is that I can take just the corners to a demo. Take two and flip them upside down and they now interlock with the other two corners, making an 8’ x 8’ field
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