Recommendations for purchases
 

I teach FIRST Robotics, Robotics Engineering, 2nd-year Engineering, and 9th grade Technical Literacy. I feel like I have almost everything I need to give these students a pretty good opportunity and experience. However, I may have an opportunity to purchase a few more things to really finish off the program so hopefully one day soon it will be rather polished. To describe what we have already would take me too long, but we're rather well equipped. We have all the basics and then some. I'm looking for suggestions for what to purchase to really enhance our FRC team or the classes I teach during the school day. What have you always thought "oh I really wish we had a..." ? The suggestions can be anything from large equipment to software to raw materials to consumables etc. I'd like to purchase things like motors, motor controllers, cRio, batteries, etc for FRC but it's hard to know what's legal next year.

Whatever I buy, I want it to be relevant, useful, learnable/teachable, and to last. I'm somewhat interested in re-vamping the 9th grade Technology Literacy curriculum with some new hardware/kits/activities/etc. It's a 9-week class. Currently we have about 3 weeks of computer history, 3 weeks of computer hardware and digital information, and 3 weeks of robotics programming.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Well, if you have the resources, you could invest in researching drive trains. It's useful for the competition, and if you get one that your students really love then they can already have a general drive base year to year. Perhaps something that you can place "drive modules" into so you can trade drives quickly and get your students practiced in a variety of them.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

If you haven't already I'd recommend investing in some 80-20 extrusion and fasteners. It makes prototyping a breeze and once you decide on a final configuration it is easy to switch out for box aluminum.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

When I was in high school we had a course that covered multimedia engineering. It was mostly applied digital signal processing. I thought it was very interesting. It was through the Infinity project but I imagine you could come up with something similar.

If I had money to spare I think it would go with a CNC Router/plasma cutter.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Off the top of my head, here are some of the things I'd consider buying if I suddenly had grant money that had to be spent before next season, and I was thinking of both FRC and the courses that can use robotics stuff.

Materials
-10 or 20 Victors
-Gearbox parts, including 2-4 sets of shifting hardware and a whole bunch of aluminum gears from AndyMark and wcproducts.net
-Aluminum in various sizes and shapes: sheets, box tubes, round tubes, round stock, T-slot extrusions, angle, etc.
-Polycarbonate sheets in several thicknesses
-Another cRio
-Extra sets of wheels of each type we are thinking of using on a prototype or a competition robot
-A bunch of polycord tubing
-A bunch of surgical tubing
-Pneumatic cylinders of sizes we don't have in stock

Computers
-Set of 6-7 laptops or tablets with good battery life for scouts
-Power inverter + more robot batteries for scouts + better charger
-Server computer
-One or two nice desktops specifically for CAD work

Tools
Hex broaches + suitable arbor press

Course Materials
One ton of Vex parts and controllers

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Just speaking for electrical, it's easier to make a removable electronics panel on the robot (and makes for a fantastic board that can be utilized in numerous practice bots) if you have powerpoles, and especially so if you can get them with the chassis mount and plug like so:

http://www.powerwerx.com/powerpole-a...ch-4-sets.html
(The part the plug plugs into is pictured on the same page but is a separate purchase)

Or if you have kids that are just plain interested in learning about electronic components, this is a great way to get them started, it comes with two books, tons of projects, and numerous parts to get them started and help them understand how things go together.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...=Learning+kits

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

If you have the resources ($$$$) I would recomend buying a nice 3D printer. Our partner teams printer was very useful throughout the season especially for sprocket spacers and a fan duct for a shooter gearbox.

http://robotics.mnmsa.org/media/photos/

picture 71 shows the shooter gearbox fan duct, and prettymuch any pictures with the wheels wll show the sprocket spacers (all 20 of them :ahh: ) The sprocket spacers had to be a precise height so it lined up perfectly with our shifter's sprockets. We wouldn't have been able to get this result without the printer

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Your mill could have easily matched that precision.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

I've always thought that many teams overlook the automation of a robot by a large amount during build season. I think purchasing sensors (VEX or any other sensors) would be a smart choice and to teach a few weeks just about automation techniques as well as sensor integration into a design/system.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Keep in mind we've been doing FIRST for 12 years now, so we've accumulated a lot. Nearly all the things listed in this thread we have already, but please keep the ideas coming! There were a couple things mentioned that we don't have yet. I'm also interested in things for engineering and technology classes which teach students from the general student population (not FRC specific).

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

i guess... we have a manuel mill though so it would have been alot harder

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Nah, not a lot harder. Just means you have to take a bit more time and care, that's all.

Here's a CNC comparison of tolerances. I'm speaking for a shop at my college here, but the absolute best they can get out of a high-quality 3D printer is a .007" print head (at least, with what they have), but they typically run a .010" head. Figure at least .0035" of "slop" with the smaller head. The CNC machines can go to .002".

Now, let's say I'm on a manual mill. I can't consistently get to .002" of tolerance--nowhere near enough practice. But I can hold .010" just fine; more than likely I can hit .005" without too much stress. And that's me--I have limited mill experience, and I'm a bit rusty. A shop teacher who's been doing this for years could probably hit the .005" just about every time it's needed, and tighter if absolutely needed.

Of course, the "if needed" part begs the question: How tight does your tolerance really need to be? .100"? .010"? .005"? .002"? Tighter? Looser? And that's not a question that is easily answered. Just trust me on that one. I had to wrestle through that on more than one occasion this last semester. And only on a couple of parts...

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

I see your point it, it would probably take about the same time on the mill, or on the printer. I would recommend having both at your disposal because while other parts are being made on the mill we could easily print our spacers at the same time

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Printing spacers is really a waste of a 3D printer, as you can buy spacers much cheaper than it takes to make them on a 3D printer. You could make them on a lathe even cheaper.

If you wondering where to get spacers from, McMaster sells a really nice set of plastic spacers that we dye black (stolen from 973). Really helps putting together a robot and saves a ton of time/money.

A 3D printer IMO is best used for low stress hard to find/get/make parts. Its also great for crazy pot mounts, plastic gears that are not taking load. etc...

-RC

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

You might want to look into these guys if you would like to teach teh kids about controls:
http://www.quanser.com/english/html/..._homepage.html

they ahve some pretty neat platforms to do controls experiments from.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

I'm not sure if you strictly wanted to stick with prepacked robotics kits or how deep you wanted to get into certain parts of engineering...

As an (almost graduated) Electrical Engineer, I'd recommend a few PIC micro programmers (I have a PICKit2 that works really well with a ZIF socket, you may want to look into a PICKit3 or similar), a bunch of PICs, several breadboards, wire sets, resistor kits, capacitor kits, along with standard gate logic, potentiometers, push buttons, and lots of LEDs. Simple things that blink and respond to simple user input usually spark interest in electrical engineering.

If you wanted to get real deep you could pick up a bunch of high powered MOSFETs and let them make their own speed controllers (although this wouldn't have much of a FRC application).

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Much like cities have Coats for Kids and Bike Rescues, I think we need Lathes for Kids. You really can make just about anything on a lathe in the absence of other tools, and we made so many of them to build things in WWII and thereafter that you can pick up a non-basketcase for $200-$400 and get it running for not a whole lot more and elbow grease.

I find it fascinating all the press that these mini 3D printers get. Really all of these people should be getting a lathe and a mill first, then move onto the 3D printer for really exotic stuff.

After all, they made these without a DRO... or even a computer!

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

I did not know mcmaster had those, that would have been nice to know. But even if we did get them we would have had to machine them down still, we had some waky heights on those spacers. but yah ill have to remember that for next year.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Quoted for extreme accuracy.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

FYI that cut away (or one of them) of the Wasp Major you linked to is in our engine museum here at Pratt & Whitney. Of course we also have bigger cutaways of a JT8D and JT9D turbofan engines and the ones we have here are also animated and can fully rotate.

Back to the topic I agree lathes are good, but I loved having our CNC plasma cutter that we got this year. The whole setup was about $10k which was the 4'x4' CNC table and the cutter head. It was a huge time saver.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Was it a Torchmate?

If so, what materials did you use it for mostly? Did you modify the cutter head at all or what gas you were using. I'd love to hear more about the setup if you used it for FRC parts because MORT just got a CNC plasma cutter as well and they're looking to set it up for the season. I'm not sure what company or model this one is though. I believe it is a PlasmaCam.



Thanks!

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

We cut mostly 6061 on it. Although be warned it it will take the heat treat our of the aluminum near the cuts in the heat affected zone. We cut a variety of thicknesses up to 1/4 and were cutting parts in minutes of making the designs.

As far as I know we used the standard plasma cutter head. Our machine is the plasma cam that you show a picture of and is set up in our welding area for ventilation. Be warned in your setup the computer that runs it needs to be well protected from spatter and that the vaporized metal does move.

The gas we use it just filtered and regulated shop air nothing special.

I will suggest making several test pieces before build. We spent a lot of time learning the best way to make our parallel plate drive and came up with some great processes to make what used to take days in a couple hours, although I can't garuntee everyone has the tools needed to make the types of setups we divised I recommend some trial and error.

Akash, look at my FB photo album for Build Season 2012 to see pictures of the setup.

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Mindstorms and the Carnegie Mellon Curriculum or Vex and Swept Away. I've taught a 6 week summer school class around the former, and am teaching a two week class this summer around the later. The Legos keep, until sets get mixed up or pieces lost to the vacuum, but that is a slow and minor degradation of ability. The Vex will last as long or shorter, depending on how much you let your students cut the material. One feedback I've gotten from a PLTW engineering teacher who has used both FTC and VEX was that the students all preferred FTC because it wasn't so open ended, that the LEGOs were easier to deal with. YMMV

There is a classroom bundle from Vex for about $6k that gets you a field, a game, and kits for 5 robots. Getting enough so that they can work in groups of 3 or 4 makes a huge difference when hands are engaged. I'd take these rather than one big machine for a classroom.

Wetzel

Re: Recommendations for purchases
 

Will do, Peter, thanks for the information. Since you most likely have the same setup I will be bugging you during this Summer. :)

Thanks again!
-Akash