Rookie Team Question.
 

As a rookie team who just finished the competition season in March we are looking to prepare for next year already. We are wondering what materials teams suggest we have. So tools for in the pit, tools for the school and any other advice anyone thinks would be helpful. We had a great time and appreciated all of the help so many of the teams the the Greater Pittsburgh Regional even were able to give us. We also learned a lot of lessons about not waiting till January to start things and try and be fore prepared an proactive after this first year.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

Hi! As far as tools, I can't reccomend too much. If you guys don't have a portable vacum yet that's pretty important, as well as the usual files/wrenches/rivet guns/screwdrivers/crimps/ziptie snippers. Hacksaws and acsess to bandsaws/mills are probably high on the list. Most of this can come with you guys in the pit... We even used to bring a mini drill press in our pit setup. This thread is also super helpful, but again no tool suggestions. If you guys need any help, feel free to PM me! c:

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

I would recommend having one or two computer monitors in your pit, one could show your match schedule, and one could show a video of your season.

You would also need HDMI or VGA cables. And a computer.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

One of my recent non-FIRST projects was setting up a $50 Raspberry Pi to be a kiosk video player for digital signage purposes. It is velcro'd to the back of a 24" monitor and all you need to do is fill a USB stick with videos and they will automatically be played in an endless loop as soon as the Pi is powered on.

It was too late to offer to set this up for my team's pits but if I can get that setup going for next year it will save having to pack and set up three extra laptops.

Could be a neat little off season project for someone that likes to tinker. If you really want to get fancy there are even ways to network the Pis and have them synchronize playback like a big digital sign. Definitely something I'd love to try.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

Small Drill Press
Small Band Saw
Hand Drill or 2
Drill Bits
Full set of Sockets with Ratchet Wrenches
Allen Wrenches
Clamps (large, small & C)
Needle nose pliers
Side Cutters
Mallet
Hammers
Screw Drivers (Flat and Philips)
Nut Drivers
Crescent Wrench (SAE and Metric)
Calipers
Rulers (6", 12" 48")
Tape Measures
Easy Outs (for stripped hex heads)
Tap Set
Kitchen Sink
Boxed End/Open End wrenches
Digital Scales (2 pound and 200 pound limits)

Just off the top of my head.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

It's difficult to make specific recommendations without understanding your current resources or perceived resource gaps. But there are a few strategies teams do to manage material resources.

First, standardize your basic materials of construction and fastners. Material standards are somewhat limited by your tooling. Limiting the various fastners and fastner sizes makes your robot easier to maintain and keeps you from buying too many tools.

Next, I like to have a few spare COTS parts that get used every year. Having those go-to parts speeds up the early build season and provides other opportunities for off season training projects.

Here are a few examples of materials, fastners, and standard COTS parts for your team to consider.

Materials - We use 1x1 and 1x2 aluminum tubing, 0.09 and .12 aluminum sheet, and 1/8" polycarbonate. This type of construction is now more assessible to teams using VexPro's framing system. We also keep 1/2" hex shaft and associated bearings.

Fastners - We use metric from our sponsor. However, I have seen lots of teams use 10-32 or 10-24 screws plus 5/32 or 3/16 rivets.

COTS - This list can get large and expensive. But I always need a stock of motor controllers, pneumatic solenoids, motors, cylinders, and a few gearboxes. Robot construction rules do change year to year. There is some risk in buying these items in advance.

Let us know if you have any specific questions.

David

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

One thing I can't recommend enough is a whiteboard. In our pit, we've used it for keeping track of pre-match checks on our robot and who in the pit crew is responsible for each one. Making sure that your machine is ready to compete before each match is hugely important, and having this visible, organized, and easily changeable checklist makes it that much easier to do.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

Not too familiar with Pittsburgh area teams, but you might want to try finding a well-established team in your area and see what they do. If you don't know where to find one of those, the FIRST Senior Mentor for that part of the state(?) should be able to help.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

That's really cool! Great way to save space, and much cheaper then having a dedicated computer. I might bring this up to my team!

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

Thanks! My application was for a display booth to advertise for the summer camp I volunteer with... but pit displays are exactly the same thing. It's definitely faster and easier because you basically pull out the monitor and plug it in and away it goes! There is a little bit more prep involved if you are working with PowerPoint presentations, you have to export your slides to pictures or video since the Pi can't run PowerPoint.

(However, the latest Pi, version 2, will apparently eventually run Windows 10 -- for free! -- so even that may eventually be possible.)

I got a PM asking for details so I will try to make a post either here on CD or on a blog someplace so I can share the details of what I did.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

You could always post a whitepaper on CD. I didn't PM you but I am interested in this concept

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

Sounds like a good idea!

I am of course über busy with preparation for my team's trip to Worlds. But after that I'll have some time to look into doing this.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

We have a fire extinguisher, first aid kit, and a kit for clean up battery acid spills. They are used in our work space and we bring them to the pits. We have found a trash can, dustpan and brush in the pits to be very useful.

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

We had a great time being right next to you guys in the pits at Greater Pittsburgh!
One general rule we have is if we used a tool to build something on the robot, we bring it to competition. This is beyond our regular assortment of wrenches, hex sets, screwdrivers, etc., but no, we are not bringing band saws or drill presses, we make do with hack saws, hand drills, a lot of care and measuring more than once!
As everyone else says, cots items are immensely useful. For example, we had a set of fittings get knocked out on a piston this year, and we had a second identical piston we quickly replaced with so we had more time to fix the first piston properly.
Many people talk about checklists. We have a sheet of paper with check boxes next to each item that we put inside of a plastic sleeve, and we use dry erase markers to mark off each item as it is completed before a match.
We have our checklist and cots electronics list saved on our computers (I was in charge of those) and I think we have our tools list digitized somewhere as well. I will make sure to send them to you and post them here when I get to the school tomorrow. (and maybe others can point out some things we are missing too!)

Re: Rookie Team Question.
 

I have attached our team's electronic spare parts that we bring to every competition. This is this year's list. It mainly a list for spares of everything that we have on the robot.
Unfortunately, our competition checklist and tools checklists were lost earlier this week in a computer crash. (Now everyone is understanding why I was being so anal about using dropbox for all files, but of course those two lists were never saved there...) I know we have a hard copy of each somewhere, but where they have moved them to (I am graduating, and the new leaders are performing spring cleaning) is anyone's guess.