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Originally Posted by AdamHeard
I'd argue that more time should be put towards fundraising, and COTS should be used more.
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Fundraising isn't the issue. We've got people ready to give us money, but we may be limited to spending an incredible $1,000 during build season (or at least during the first few weeks) due to some school policy issues.
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The in house CNC is more useful during that time for prototyping, or for machining things that can't be bought.
Imo teams should only be making bearing blocks now if they are continuing a legacy design of their own (and therefore can use previous year's for practice bots).
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I'm not sure I agree. I don't know about you, but our team has never been able to design something in CAD, generate a toolpath, set up a fixture, and make a part on a mill on the first day of build season. We have access to two CNC mills, and a guy who programs CNC's for a living, so we can make these parts easily in 6 hours on day one of build, including setup time. There's no reason not to do this on the first day of build season to save some cash. The last few years, we've ended the season with less than $100 in our account, and we would've spent more if we could.
A few seasons ago, I invited three students and another mentor to my house on the first evening of build season, where we machined 10 4" aluminum wheels, a frame, and drive gearboxes. This took us from 5:00 pm to 3:00 am.
Could we have bought those parts? Of course. But the team paid absolutely nothing for this drive base. The aluminum, and sprockets were donated, and we made the rest (including gears!), and got bearings and CIM pinions in the kit. That was our most successful build season ever.