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Design
* Graph paper and a good ink pen. You'll waste untold hours of CAD time if you don't draw out sketches first. * Solidworks 2003 - I like it more than Inventor. Let me see what I'm building, calculates how much it weights, and let me see if things are gonna bash into each other. (Interference detection is a god-send when you're building anything with more than 10 parts). * Cosmos/SM - To see if it'll break, and to use FEA to optimize my designs. * GNU/SCiTe - my text editor, G-Code editor. Good also to keep to-do lists in. Yeah, I'm arcane like that. Build: * Sharpie marker. I was a decent machinist when I knew how to use the shop's precision layout tools and hold 0.002" tolerance on my parts. I became a *good* machinist when I knew where I can cut corners and just mark things with a sharpie marker, locate things with my Mark 1 eyeball, and use a drill press instead of a mill. * Bridgeport Manual mill. Yes, there are times when we CNC things, but we still havn't gotten to the point where we have enough good CNC operators. I can build just about every part on our robot with a mill and a lathe by hand. * Clausing-Metosa 14x40" lathe, with carbide indexable tools. You have to admit, being able to see the cutting edge reflected in the mirror finish of a piece of aluminum is pretty darn cool.. * HydroMech horizontal band saw. With a 420V motor, you can just about cut a car in half on that thing. Field Repairs: * Dremel. Only complain is that I don't have a cordless one. Never underestimate what a Dremel with an 1/8" end mill chuck into it will do for aluminum removal, at 30,000 RPM (Steady hands *AND* eye protection for *EVERYONE* around you is a MUST!). * Ryobi 18V Cordless drill/driver I'd go for the DeWalt, but it's my personal drill and I couldn't afford the DeWalt kit. |
Definitely Mr. Bridgeport (our mill). It can be used for so many interesting things, especially knocking 1/4" off a solid steel bar...
Other useful tools: zip ties - can't live without 'em hose clamps - great for fixing messed up drill clutches portable welder - great for 10 pm welding in the hotel parking lot sand blaster - makes sprockets look nice and pretty lathe - because you never know when you'll need to make a bushing in a jiffy drill press - who needs a diet when you have a drill press for weight reduction? |
The Best Tool
The best tool of all time has to be "The Waterjet".... But if it has to be a portable tool i would say my pocket knife (Gerber Knife), and a 5/32 T-Wrench
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You got it! A CNC water jet is the tool that will set you free
to make the impractical light weight parts and gears that previously would take forever! For hand tools give me a three cornered scraper for shaping and deburring! These can be bought outright or made from shortened triangular files. They operate similar to peeling an apple or potato. Motto no. 122 "No Horseplay in the Shop!" |
DIKEM and a scribe. With this and my eyes I can get to within .002 on a Dewalt Mitre saw with a wood blade. (and that was at 2 in the morning!)
Also, that reminds me I like that saw too with the carbide tipped blade. It will zip right through anything except steel but we have a cutoff blade for that. Also really handy sometimes is my butane pencil torch. Built in igniter, and a fine tip flame up to 2000 degrees F. Not bad. One really annoying tool is the propane torch without a built in igniter. It is kind of old so it doesn't burn so clean anymore. Our barbeque lighter was out of gas so that option to light it was out. We turned to the good 'ol bench grinder (another great tool) and a piece of steel angle to try to light the darned thing. We turned the gas all the way up and made a shower of sparks bigger than you could imagine but the thing still wouldn't light. Time for a new torch I guess. TOOLS TOOOLS TOOOOOOLS!!!!!:D |
heh... must I even say?
a WIRE STRIPPER!!!
Actually, last year my freshmanly fascination with this tool is what gave the team its name... |
Most useful tool? Our giant wrench and our "fart dispersal unit" (a plug-in fan).
But seriously, we really found some good uses for plastic zip ties. |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
:D The Slide Hammer :D . We tap the ends of our drive axels and use this to yank them out or shove them in. Works great and it is tons of fun. :p
last year my favorite tool was the dremel because it saved my arms from a lot of the "freshman go file" times :mad: |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
needle nose plyers to pick all the metal shards out of my hand
i think i have a total of 33 cuts / gashes now :ahh: :( |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Well, ever since I've been on the Technokat's I have dispised our cordless drills...they could barely cut through plastic!!! :ahh: Much to my delight, we recently picked up a good ol' 1/2" Makita M-Force 18V cordless drill...now this has to be my favorite tool. You can cut through anything with this drill...and it never bogs down! it's amazing. Just the other day I popped in a 1-3/16" bit(though the top of it is 1/2") for comedy's sake...but it fit! Ooooh yeah. Spins like a charm. Oh yeah, and it's got NiMH batteries...not those annoying NiCd batts that anger me. :D
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Milwaukee cordles Sawzall, Milwaukee cordless Drill + Craftsman carbid bits, my 40 year old set of end wrenches, my 30 year old bearing puller, my new pnumatic tubing cutter (hey stick your finger here), and finally a Craftsman Lathe from 1953 that I had to make parts on. Lets not forget a piece of 3 foot pipe for "convincing" stubborne bolts when needed.
Ivey |
Re: New tool
My favorite tool is the lathe that has a plaque on it that says " Conforms to the wartime measures act of 1940. For all those who are not Canadian that act was abolished after WW2.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Deburring tool.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
My favorite tool is a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red. Really kicks the coding part of my brain into high gear!
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
I love this 7/16 and 3/8 hex driver I aquired from a verizon guy... Its sorta like a double-ended nut driver. Who needs rachets?
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Welder, and my new flowery screwdriver i got for my birthday from a mom from 1115. lol
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Its gotta be the heat gun, I mean there are so many good uses; Heat Shrink, press fitting stuff, warming food, melting/melding/bending lexan and a ton of other things. But a very close second is the set of hex ball drivers. They smoke normal hex wrenches.
Oh yeah, 5hp Air Compressors are fun... |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
can anyone say angle grinder...oooo....sparks :-P
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
my favorite tool would have to be brut force :D
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
It's going to break the rules, but I have three favorite tools, because they are so useful to me everyday:
1. 12" single-cut mill file with an adjustable handle. A big file is not only easier to hold, its length removes more metal in one pass and finishes the job quickly. 2. DeWalt 18V cordless XRP hammer-drill/driver. It's so handy to simply reach over and pick up the tool when I need it. It also has plenty of power for hard jobs like drilling through thick steel. (Only used hammer-drill once, but I was really glad that time!) 3. Custom folding pocket Allen key set with ball-end. I bought a folding ball-end set and switched the keys into my compact metal handled set. It really excels at driving screws at an angle, but easy to carry around. It is my most useful tool during build season. :D |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Dremel, hands down
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
well my personal favorite tool has to be the drill press we got half way through build. not only did it do our drilling but it also helped us press on beartings adn rotar things out. but then again their is the chopsaw. at 1902 the robot could have never been built without the trusty chopsaw.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
spell cheker is a vary usefull tool ;)
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
- Allen Wrenches
- Reciprocating Saw ;) :p |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
I'd have to say the deburring tool is the most used on my team. With about 1000 speed holes in the frame and CNC all around, we all get a lot of practice with it.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
umm zip ties?
really now, they are so useful! (they came in handy when my team stole my hair ties to put them on the robot :rolleyes: ) Zip Ties and Dikes/Side Cutters. |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Being programmer.. my favorite is defiently the parallax screw driver lol
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Re: New tool
Multimeter or Electrical Tape.
Usually 99% chance of them being in my pocket during the build season. And a 99.9% chance of them being in my pocket during Competition. Pavan. |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
I would say miter saw, but then I got to thinking, instead of what is the most useful at the time, what would be the worst to be stuck without for the season. You can substitute other things for wrenches and such, but the thing we actually ran out of and spent the last 3 or so days of build season without tops my list, zip ties. Without them electrical work ground to a halt as did prototyping mounts.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
The optical center punch and a plotter that prints 1:1 scale for templates.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Dremel. So helpful in melting stuff. :rolleyes:
btw, Ididn't want to make a new thread about this when there was already one. |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Wow... Talk about thread ressurection!
Thinking back to my time with FRC, I'd say the best tool was self-tapping screws. :yikes: |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
This year I brought a pneumatic pop rivet gun into the lab. We had our frame locked down in a few minutes. The year before we had to take turns popping the big rivets and it took us hours.
Roy |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Tortoise HG.
Who says Software doesn't have any tools? There's another tool I find entertaining, but he doesn't like it when I call him that. (Only joking, don't worry!) |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
I think my name makes it obvious :)
i guess the jigsaw comes at a distance second ;) |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
A Multi-Allen wrench and a socket wrench will solve all you'r problems...
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
A mouse for CAD. Everybody knows it's impossible to use CAD software without one. :)
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
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My favorite is a tough choice between the hacksaw and the file. I can't decide. I used both to make this when I was a freshman in high school....35 years ago.... |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Jigsaw.
It can do straight cuts, unique curves, large diameter holes in wood, metal, pvc, polycarb with dozens of styles of blades that are easier to change than a bandsaw, and still fit in a briefcase. |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
My SOG Powerlock Multitool, something about having pliers, a v-cutter (think for cutting seatbelts, so works well on rope, plastic bags of bolts, zipties, fabric etc), small wood saw, file and screwdrivers at short notice is nice.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Call me kooky, but a well rested mind/brain
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
A file, when everything else goes wrong I can always enjoy mindless filing of edges...
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
CNC Machine, preferably a Haas.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
My favorite tool would have to be our teams horizontal/vertical band saw. We picked it up at Harbor Freight. That thing will seriously cut through anything and is very durable. Only problem is that its really heavy. But the benefits out weigh the negatives.
My favorite tool that i use outside of robotics and also in robotics is my DeWalt cordless reciprocating saw. Its 18V of raw power and can chop through anything that i have put it up against. |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
I'll also second the pneumatic pop-riveter. Last year we picked up a foot-shear and finger brake (not as dangerous as they sound!) to do sheet metal work, they built most of our bot this year.
Another must have for anyone working with sheet metal are step drills. Of all the tools though I really couldn't live without the shop broom... |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Wago, wirecutter/crimps, and a soldering iron. And my camera. :)
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
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weight to point score impact of a widget defines much of the game...
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Gonna go with the multi alan wrench or the philips head screwdriver.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
zip-tay!!!!!!!
(and a disc!) |
Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
A DeWalt corded drill with a 1/4" and a 1/8" bit. It makes all our fastener holes. If it can't be riveted or bolted, it doesn't belong on the robot. =D
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
7/16" wrench and 4mm allen wrench
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Knipex adjustable wrench pliers.
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Re: Your favorite/most useful tool?
Laptop
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