Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

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Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

Multiple options would be appreciated.

For 237, most of our tools that we started with back in the day were either already at the school (miller, lathe) and also at a sponsor's off site build place.

But, combined through out the 7 years the team has existed we have constanly brought new machines in through grants and other means to the school..

I believe we have about 3 millers, and 4 lathes in perfectly working order now.

And, last year we acquired some CNC controls for those lathes/millers as well..

I think. I'm not in the metals shop as often as I would like to be so I am only going by memory.

So yeah.. wow.. all of the above.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

S.P.A.M. (180) has it's industrial mill, lathe, drill press, grinder..
because of gracious donations by Pratt and Whitney. One of our former mentors asked them if we could have them so his name was put on it and now the team has it. If they weren't closing up shops we would still using probably a lot of table top items.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

In the beginning ......... team 47 fabricated the robot at Delphi in what was called a lab. Over the years Pontiac Central had taken a greater role and responsibility. Currently, and the last few years, the robots are made at Pontiac Central High School in my Technology lab.

We have several drill presses, a lathe (old 1940) a Bridgeport (very used) several band saws (refurbished), and a new Miller Welder, break, bar folder and grinders. All common metal fabricating machines are 40+ years of age.

Delphi has assisted in several purchases (Bridge Port, Welder and Lathe), however, most of the tools are part of the Vocational Department. Delphi has enriched our students - not just the FIRST Team.

I am proud to say that last year 99% of the robot was manufactured at PCHS at the hands of Students, Engineers, Parents and mentors (teachers, college students). Only one small part was sent for a hole to be wire EDM enlarged - less than $35.00.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

We use tools down at Georgia Tech iwth the RoboJackets (our main sponsor). we have a 2 axis CNC mill, band saw, miter saw, hand drills, drill presses, roto-zips, sanders, and other tools.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

A lot of what Harding High School's shop teacher George Lazar has in his metal shop was donated to Team 48 by Delphi Packard. All of the equipment is very old and heavily used, but George keeps it in good running order. We've donated three Bridgeport mills, a CNC mill, and a bandsaw, among other items. These were all obsolete but perfectly functional items that were sitting around in a warehouse we lovingly called "The Morgue". This place was great. In addition to the old mills and such, there were dozens of old pieces of manufacturing equipment covered in extruded alumimum and Lexan guarding. We used to let the kids go to The Morgue and strip down these machines. They loved bringing back piles of loot every year. Unfortunately, to save money, Delphi auctioned off its excess and obsolete equipment and stopped leasing the Morgue a few years ago. We miss that place.

Moral of the story - a lot of the equipment companies deem "obsolete" is not broken - it is simply outdated technology that would work fine for FIRST teams. It never hurts to ask local businesses if they have such equipment they may be willing to donate or sell at a big discount.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

Ok heres our problem. We have lots of tools, but they are all geared toward woodworking. The only metalworking tools we have are a plate shear, a sheet metal bender and a small(but capable) NC lathe. This year we would really like to get a mill, but we do not have enough money. How have other teams gone about asking local businesses to donate unused tools?

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

Check around with local machine shops, and see if they're replacing any of their equipment. If they're going to junk it, or sell it off, they might give it to you/sell it pretty cheap.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

Simple. We didn't. Even if we had the money for we don't have room for it. Actually, we don't even have a room. We share the room with the physics department, so we always have to clean up at the end of the day. The closest thing we have to machining equipment is a drill press. We had to mount some of our bigger tools, like the drill press, to a cart with locking wheels for easy storage/deployment.

We outsource everything that needs to be machined. We have some companies (and parents with access to such tools) do machining for us. It has a long turn around time though. At BEST, we can only have things done overnight. Bigger jobs take a few days. We've been trying to help out the machinists the best we can though. I heard something about a new rule soon to be implimented that anything that goes out to be machined must be CADed first. This way, you don't bother the machinists with some odd request about wanting a "bracket with a hole in the middle" with no numbers. Another theory is that if you can't CAD it, it's probably too complicated to be machined.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

In our first year we made it by using one mentor's machine shop in his barn on weekends and a mini bandsaw and hand drill (power of course). However in our second year the vocational school that hosts us let us use their machines after taking an 8 hour safety course. Right now we can drill, mill, and lathe, and bandsaw. The mentor still does the welding at home but in the coming years we hope to get someone authorized to weld at the school becuase most of our construction takes place in the 72 hours leading up to ship time (and there are usually team members at the school for around 60 hours of that time.)

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

We are allowed to use the machine shop at the Visteon Metrowest building. Its got a horizontal band saw, two vertical band-saws (steel, Al), two lathes, two programmable mills, drill press, ans some other smaller things. But we decided to see how little we could use it and went with our Hacksaw & Drill concept.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

To clarify even more, our team is (and has always been) a 501c3 organization. This allows donations to the team to be used as a tax write off. This has helped the team acquire additional machines. I was able to get a Bridgeport miller donated to the team from where I work after they replaced it with a ProtoTrak. A local autobody shop donated the use of one of thier Chevrolet flatbed trucks for a few hours so we could move the Bridgeport from my place of work to the school where it now resides.
We don't have CNC controls, instead they are digital readouts. Both of them were acquired through a grant we got last year although we didn't have enough time to mount them on 2 of our 3 Bridgeports before build season started. With the additional money left over in the grant we were able to purchase a set of collets for the Bridgeports and some endmills from MSC.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

The only tools that are readily available to us are grinders and a drill press that needs a tuneup. However, we also have hand tools-- drills, hacksaw, mini hacksaw, wrenches, and the like (but we need more of some of them)--and we are sponsored by a machine shop. If we have something small, we do it with hand tools, but if it's a big job, we usually tell the shop what we need done. I think we once thought about getting more tools, but that didn't happen (yet).

That said, I think there are auction houses. If you need a tool, you could try going to one and getting it there. (We were interested in a tool that was at one of these places, but we had almost no warning, so nothing came of it. Bummer.) The tools may be old or used, but if they work, who really cares how they look?

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

My team's tool situation is pretty similar. We have lots of wood working tools but not much for metal work. We also never seem to have sharp hacksaw blades. Last year we got a metal press(I think thats what its called). The ability to bend and cut sheet metal has been awesome, its allowed us to do some of the metal work ourselves, which shorted the time it took for many parts to be constructed. We also have three CAM machines that are for working plastics and light metals that were donated to the school in the early to mid 90's. The problem is that we don't have any of the software needed to run them so they set around and collect dust! Its very frustrating because we often give up on designs because it will take to long to get it made by our sponsor.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

Since 2002 have been and still are partnered with Glendale Community College where we are able to do al our macining for the build. The students must enroll in the class, but they get a huge discount for being HS students. It comes to only about $30 for the class and parking for the quarter (incredible deal). Anyway, the instructor is a very cool guy and very accomadating to us. He will stay late, and come in on weekends, and the students are not required to do the class curriculum (because we are in a crunch to make parts). The shop has three HAAS CNC Mills, a HAAS CNC lathe, about 5 bridgeports, and about 6 manual lathes. Some of the machines have DRO which is very nice. There are also large horizontal and vertical bandsaws. The shop is quite incredible, but the instructor has other students to teach, and those other students need time on the machines too. So it is a shared resource.

Next door there is a welding shop that is able to do some stuff for us. They did a few welds for us this year in a pinch, but we got the frame beautifully TIG welded (like a roll of nickles) at the place where the machine shop instructor works. At this shop, they manufacture high performance racing bicycles all day every day, so getting in a few welds for us after hours wasn't a big deal, and they were the nicest welds I have ever seen.

In 2005, we also partered with a local machine shop (Tru-Cut) owned by the uncle of one of our students. They were a huge help this year since we had more machines parts then ever before.

We try to have the students do the majority of the machining. The only thing they don't do is the MasterCAM and GibbsCAM stuff because we don't have it at school, and it would take a good while to learn.

The only thing the students don't really do is the welding. It is one of those things where we are just better off leaving it to the pros. Also, we don't have a welder nor money for one so that has a lot to do with it. :D

For sheet metal, in 2004 we aquired a new professional in the industry as a team mentor. He sells lasercutting machines as a profession and he has several shops around the southland who are clients of his. And between them, we can usually get anything we need to lasercut and and bent on a press brake.


At the high school, we have a very small shop space. We have a chop saw and a floor drill press, and a bench grinder and that's about it for the big tools. We also have a large assortment of hand tools and a few power tools (circular saw, drill, angle grinder). So, we rely on our gracious partners for fabrication purposes.

The biggest challenge has been computers for Inventor. Currently we have ONE that we just recently acquired. I had to bring down my computer quite often simply because we didn't really have one to use. We relied on students laptops too. It made it hard to learn when their weren't many computers at the work site to use. The school was gracious enough to lend two students laptops which they could keep for the duration of the build and until after the regional, but they were hardly capable of running Inventor. It was miserable.

We don't have a good plan to remedy the computer situation. That's what we get when our workshop is a (shared) lab full of Apples but our single new donated IBM computer (which is totally free and clear of and no way associated with the school, only the team is a great start. I just hope the students are able to take care of it.

The one big problem is that if the school were to give us computers they most likely would have Novell and all sorts of other restrictions and stuff on them that would make it a nightmare to actually get any work done.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

scitobor 617, we had the same problem this year. We ran out of spare hacksaw blades (I wore one out in about two hours cutting steel rod), so we got some more. I forget the brand, but it wasn't Buck Bros. and the blades were white. Haven't had to replace the blades since then. If you get several packages of blades, that should do you for a while.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

We used our school's lathes, and drill presses, and band saw, but all the tools (like wrenches, etc) were our Teacher/Advisor's tools. I think a couple of parts were sent to OPG (Ontario Power Generation...our main sponsor), and to Rapid Refregiration, since they have the appropriate machines to do the job :)

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

I've hacksawed quite a few things before and I simply won't do it anymore unless there is not another tool made that will do the job. It is just plain tiring. Sawzalls have gotten so cheap these days that it is really in your best interest to get one. If you can afford a small horizontal (or even vertical, or maybe both) bandsaw that would be even better!

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

Our club bought a small band saw, and 2 small drill presses. But we also used my personal cnc mill. And if we ever need some really facy shmancy parts i have access to star swiss style cnc lathes.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

When you say we i think ME! :rolleyes: I provided my own electrical tools solder iron, helping hand, dremel (trully the tool of the gods :D a must have for anyone who doesn't already have one), ect... actually were looking at going to a local navy research center to talk about using their waterjet, CNC machine, and other tools.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

our school had a metal shop class until they cut it because of budgeting reasons. thankfully, we were able to keep all of the machines for our robotics team.

If you have machinery in your school that is owned by the school solly for the use of robotics, then I recommend that you hold an open house to allow your school to see what you are using it all for and get them aware of robotics. Our team was in a bit of danger because our school wanted to put a printing press in where our metal shop is, but we held an open house and invited our sponsors, teachers, administrators, and parents, all to come and see what we were up to.

It can also get you a LOT of publicity.

Re: Where did your team get its machine tools?
 

Our school has a vocational technology center attached to it, and has a full machine shop (11 lathes, 6 mills, 3 CNCs, grinders, horizontal and vertical bandsaw). The catch is that only the adult mentors and specially trained students (students in the vocational machining class) are allowed to use it. I finally took the class and got my qualification this year.