Jameco and Make Zine are holding a contest to build a “CoasterBot,” a mini robot development platform using CD/DVD media as the main body components. I signed up, and this will be my first post documenting my progress. I have my chassis ready so far, and plan to use my Arduino.

In the Make: Robot build newsletter #3, Kurt Meredith was mentioned for his idea of thermoforming a CD. After viewing his blog, it gave me the idea to try using a hot air gun to bend the CD for my robot chassis.

I had two different CD’s, one was a TDK that had gold paint on it. This one folded over nicely, but the paint is now peeling on it. The other was some no name brand with no paint. Once I heated it up, it folded over but I could also hear some cracking. I broke a corner, but was able to fit it back by melting the two pieces together. Once I had both CDs folded the way I wanted them, I used some strong glue and stuck them together so that I had two sides to mount my servos to.

After the glue was dry, I was not happy with the rounded front and back, so took a Dremel to them and squared it off. The chassis seems fairly sturdy but I don’t think it would hold much weight without cracking my bends. I ran a bead of glue on the underside to help with this (I hope). I should have measured where I was going to place the servos and drilled those out first, but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead

What I wound up doing was taking an old soldering iron, drawing out my holes and servo mounting areas and then burning them away. It worked, but it is kind of ugly. I was able to file down a lot of the areas so they were fairly smooth.