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Unread 12-12-2011, 11:38
Peter Matteson's Avatar
Peter Matteson Peter Matteson is offline
Ambitious but rubbish!
FRC #0177 (Bobcat Robotics)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: South Windsor, CT
Posts: 1,651
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Re: [DFTF] Budgeting for a Competitive Robot...

With no old robots to rob for COTS I would say that you need $4000 dollars to build a single competitive robot.

$1500-2000
You need to buy transmissions and other power transmission hardware (gears, sprockets, chains) that can easily run this range with reasonable spares and failed concept fallout.

$200-300
Wire, nough said

$600-800
Motor controllers, you only get 4 in the kit of late and this is always the painful number to see.

$250
Fasteners: nuts, bolts, rivets, zipties, master links etc to stock up.

$200
Additional motors, you only get 2 of the CIMS in the kit and you need to buy more if we get to use 4-5 again this year. Banebots motors have had many issues and we never go into battle without spares anymore.

$200
Bearings: we use a lot of bearings and bushings. But we also build lots of spares and failed concepts.

$300
Bumper, fabric wood and pool noodles.

$1000
Shipping: to get the parts to you...

$500
Additional raw materials

$200
Solenoid valves and other pnuematic parts.

$200
Cutters for machine tools.

This is all best guess from memory. I know when you add all this up we easily spend $4000-5000 every year on the supplies to build a single robot. We also have a lot of spares, fallout from concepts that don't make the robot, and shipping costs to bring our robot in under the typical $3500 limit. I have to say with the cost of electronics consuming so much budget when we account our cost I would like to see it go to $4000. We are close every year to that limit, because we are honest to a fault with our accounting, and the electronics is a big factor.
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2011 Championship Finalists/Archimedes Division Championships w/ 2016 & 781
2010 Championship Winners/Newton Division Champions
Thank-you 294 & 67

2009 Newton Division Champions w/ 1507 & 121
2008 Archimedes Division Champions w/ 1124 & 1024
2007 Championship Winners/Newton Division Champions w/190, 987 & 177 The Wall of Maroon
2006 Galileo Division Champions w/ 1126 & 201
www.bobcatrobotics.org
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