Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

We get a lot of great things on FIRST Choice, and today's start of window shopping opportunity gives us a great chance to figure out the best deals (actual value vs # of points) or highest demand items which will surely sell out fast.

However, looking through the list I always find some of the items downright laughable (ie, who would ever blow their credits on that??)

So I ask the community, how would you totally waste your 600 FIRST Choice credits?

My thought is 6 empty tool bags @ 100 credits each.
Maybe a slightly worse deal than purchasing 120 plastic thrust washers

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Seems like the 7pc ratcheting wrench set is over priced. I could see it being useful for a first year team, but I would personally just go out and buy a set.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

There are some better/worse deals in there... but it seems like they nominally shot for about $1 per credit.

There are outliers with less functionality or retail value, like the old control system components.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Shaft couplers, depending on your situation. If you have a lathe/mill, you can churn several out in an hour or two. Ideally I'd just buy a longer shaft.
EDIT: AC-DC 12v 1a wall adpaters. They're really cheap on ebay ($2 each), and the cost offsets the "unreliability". I've never had an issue with one.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Nooooooooooooooo!

They're so cheap, don't abuse your students by making them.

Mcmaster and Vex have them for a great price.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Depends on the style. The clamping ones on Choice are like $40 each on mcmaster.
The ones that are literally a tube with setscrews are $10, but I'm our team's machinist- and I'm cheap. I could make the setscrew ones in 10-15 minutes, depending on the number. Less if I had a rookie to tap them.
Now collars, those I would buy.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

What...? No they're not.

3/8" shaft

9946K13 $2.17 set screw
6157K13 $2.28 one piece clamp
6436K133 $4.96 two piece clamp

Prices don't increase that much as diameter increases.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Shaft couplings, not shaft collars. Especially if they're for different diameter shafts, couplings can run upwards of $40.
Collars are super cheap. I would totally buy those.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Oh, you mean the beam couplers. Sorry.

You can make a straight coupler, but it'd be a lot of work to get a helical beam coupler made in shop.

There are knock off brand ones on ebay and amazon for cheaper. A lot of diy CNC suppliers stock them as well.

They're not real commonly used in FRC, the size and weight are somewhat prohibitive.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

You can get $6 beam couplers with asymmetric shaft sizes from China, you just have to wait about 3 - 4 weeks :D

They felt to have about the same strength and deformation-resistance as the $40 ones I had used before, but that doesn't really say much.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

I like how you can buy a bag of IGUS products "fc15-102" for 10 credits, or you can buy each of the individual components for 5 or 10 credits...

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Generally shaft couplers are not used to make the shaft longer, but to facilitate assembly and disassembly.

...but quite cool if you had that capability.

Things seem reasonably 'priced' this year, more so than before. I find the pneumatic compo0nents to be good bargains: priced out fittings, tubing or valves lately? And an old-style PDB for an off-season or practice bot is a nice bargain.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

I agree that the prices went to a much more acceptable level for most items. Pneumatics last year were just crazy under valued, as the fitting bag was about 10x cheaper last year. I'm all in on the old control system parts, might not help for the 2015 build season but there are 10 other months in the year for teams to find uses for them.

I'm confused a little by the linear v-groove track since the lengths seem small and the bearings aren't also available. I think it would be hard for teams to put it to good use but maybe I'm missing something.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

I'd call the worst deal the 200 credits for a Classmate. If I had absolutely no other laptop that was usable for the drivers' station and no way to get one, I might think about it. Maybe. The only way it could be worse? If teams were allowed to get three.


The tool bag deal I can see being a bit steep, but the tool bags can come in handy if you have tools for them.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

The Microsoft camera is a pretty bad deal. 50 credits for a $21 camera.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

The appear to be cutoffs, which Bishop Wisecarver would otherwise sell for scrap. Better to donate them (which can be written off at full value) I suppose.

But I agree: Too short for much value. I'd make a nice CNC router, but 16" of steel track doesn't help.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

The classmates are useful if a student wants to program but has no laptop available. The laptops are small but they're perfectly good for programming or researching tools and parts on the internet. And it would be a last-minute backup for a driver station if your primary station laptop malfunctions (this happened to us last year at our regional when our laptop decided to stop communicating over Ethernet)

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

The individual Igus components seem like the obvious worst deal when there's an entire bag of them.

The video card is easily the trickiest part since it's only as good as the knowledge a team already has. Many school computers have the proper PCI-E slot, but don't have a power supply that can support it. So it could definitely be a miss for a team that doesn't check compatibility ahead of time. On the other hand, it could easily be a MASSIVE win for teams who need another CAD machine and have an "almost there" computer donated to them. It also means the team should have some knowledge of CAD to make any use of it, considering that the team won't get it for another few weeks.

There are definitely some steals on there if a team has machining capability and can adapt to a part. 8 ABEC-rated metric bearings for 5 credits ?! :ahh: Or maybe they're a miss if there's a problem with reliability on the part, thus they're at fire-sale rates.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

For 95% of the CAD work most FIRST teams do, that video card is very overkill. An affordable ($200 range) workstation graphics card is all you really need for most modeling tasks. At this point, most reasonable computers are bottlenecked by CPU, not GPU, the opposite of most video games.

That said, if we have left over FC credits, I wouldn't be upset if our team grabbed one for the CAD stations.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Agreed that it's overkill. I'd argue for 90% of teams, a processor with integrated Intel HD graphics or a $100 graphics card is more than adequate. Most teams do not work at a level that would see any benefit whatsoever from this video card over one if the aforementioned solutions.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

I run 8gb ram, Intel i7, and Intel HD graphics on my laptop, and I dislike cadding on it (although I spend hours and hours making swerve modules and gearboxes on it). It runs slow enough that if I load, say, a cad model of our robot, Solidworks turns all rounded parts into rectangular prisms to speed up rendering. Stuff moves slower, complex lightening holes takes a minute or more to update... take a grpahics card over more ram if you can. 4gb ram is enough, but a graphics card is so useful.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

CADing on integrated graphics will be painful when you get into full robot assemblies or complex lightening patterns, but I would concur that a midrange Quadro is very overkill for FRC use. Really low or midrange gaming cards are perfectly adequate.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

I have witnessed Inventor Pro 2015 on a 3rd-gen i7 and Intel 4000 HD graphics of a school computer. It was nothing short of lousy and discouraging in anything other than sketch mode. I think the card, while overkill, offers the ability to make an additional CAD computer from one that can't handle CAD rather than upgrading an existing CAD machine. All for $0.

In this scenario it's more that the team has a hundred credits that they haven't found a separate use for. I believe my team has only figured out get the most out of about 480 credits thus far and are considering whether to get more components to keep old robots running or small parts that may be useful in prototyping. If we wind up not figuring out a good use (we'd rather put the credits to good use rather than hoarding...) then we may get the card near the end of the purchase window, or one or two other things we're curious about.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

If teams want workstation graphics cards, there are a bunch used in the $20-50 range on ebay that would work very well.

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Maybe you could get 6 net books @ 100 credits each...

Re: Worst Deals in FIRST Choice
 

Exception: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3015

In which case it was the perfect solution... minimal weight increase and pretty much plug and play.

So yes, the certainly have valid FRC uses.