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The Roboticist’s Guide
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28 SERVO 07.2011
MANUFACTURING
The Roboticist’s Guide to Plastic
● by Matthew Spurk
Plastic has become an integral part of our society. It holds our
food, is found in our automobiles,
and is even on and in our bodies.
It also makes a great building
material for robotics. Plastics as a
building material category have
many qualities which makes them
appealing, such as cost, ease of
forming/bending, ease of
cutting/drilling/tapping, weight,
and relative strength. Plastics are
also very confusing; they come in
a wide variety, use 13 syllable
chemical compounds for the name
or a seemingly random collection
of letters for an abbreviation, and
determining which plastic is best
for your application can be
difficult, until now.
In this article, we’ll cover
some of the best and most
common plastics suitable for
robot construction, what makes
them good and bad, and where
you can find examples of such
plastics in everyday life. Each
plastic has its advantages and
disadvantages. I have personally
used nearly every plastic that will
be listed here with varying results.
In some instances, my decision
has worked perfectly and in other
cases, my decision was less than
ideal. It should be noted that we
are not attempting to discuss the
seemingly limitless number of
plastics commercially available.
The Basics
Plastic is a generic term for
a synthetic or semi-synthetic
material that can be formed
when soft and then hardened.
Plastics can be melted and pooled
into two categories: the plastics
that can be melted and pooled,
and the plastics that can’t.
Basically, some plastics become
soft and/or melt when sufficient
heat is applied. These plastics are
called thermoplastic. Other
plastics harden with sufficient
heat and are referred to as
thermoset. The chemists who
invented the various plastics were
very smart, but the names they
