Welcome to the little side of the sport Philip, what sort of ant are you building?
I used 0.5mm polycarbonate brackets on Jigsaw (which is similar to what you're proposing in construction, only with an aluminium top and polycarbonate base) and they work well, with one M2.5 bolt through each side and bent to shape. For the next version I'm going with smaller bolts and more of them on each side purely for stability, as atm the nuts have a habit of unscrewing themselves, but it's quite durable and allows a bit of flex in the design.
Joey McConnell-Farber - Team Picus Telerobotics - http://picus.org.uk/ - @joey_picus
"These dreams go on when I close my eyes...every second of the night, I live another life"
Thanks. I want to build a pneumatic flipper, but I am having troubles finding a light valve. I have built several feather flippers in the past. I might just build a servo powered lifter as a first ant.
I have been reading your forum for a while now and have picked up lots of helpful tips.
Screws are definitely the way to go with polycarbonate. Gaffa tape is possibly the only alternative
Pneumatic ants are limited to 7 bar (100 psi), and that's more than enough to contend with! Andy Hibberd is the person to talk to about antweight pneumatics, but he is resorting to making his own valve now
Good luck with your foray into ants, and hope to see you at an event soon.
Metal armour restrictions were removed some time ago. You can use anything you like within the size & weight limits. If you can build it, we will fight it!