Chief Delphi - CNC Machining Bearing Blocks

Quote:

Originally Posted by magnets (Post 1405990)

Fundraising isn't the issue. We've got people ready to give us money, but we may be limited to spending an incredible $1,000 during build season (or at least during the first few weeks) due to some school policy issues.

I'm not sure I agree. I don't know about you, but our team has never been able to design something in CAD, generate a toolpath, set up a fixture, and make a part on a mill on the first day of build season. We have access to two CNC mills, and a guy who programs CNC's for a living, so we can make these parts easily in 6 hours on day one of build, including setup time. There's no reason not to do this on the first day of build season to save some cash. The last few years, we've ended the season with less than $100 in our account, and we would've spent more if we could.

A few seasons ago, I invited three students and another mentor to my house on the first evening of build season, where we machined 10 4" aluminum wheels, a frame, and drive gearboxes. This took us from 5:00 pm to 3:00 am.

Could we have bought those parts? Of course. But the team paid absolutely nothing for this drive base. The aluminum, and sprockets were donated, and we made the rest (including gears!), and got bearings and CIM pinions in the kit. That was our most successful build season ever.

I responded earlier asking about whether cost was the main factor or the learning experience. Its sounds like a little of both.
Now that you shared that that the aluminum is donated, it makes sense based on what you described earlier in addition to the time constraints.
As a person who sees the process of creating bearing blocks and the person that pays 99.99% of our expenses in our program, when I see COTS items such as a $20 WCP bearing block, there is no way I could beat that with respect to price, time and experience from our CNC/machining mentors.
I think Adam's suggestion sums it up pretty good for us these days, although we still create custom wheels for our robots for the learning experiences and cool factor.