[EricH]

Originally Posted by mentorDon

How many Squawkers here could build a robot for less than $4000 if they had to count CNC machining time at $100+ per hour and all materials?

I'll also bite.

I'll speak for two teams in this post: Yep, and Yep.

For one simple reason: One of the teams has minimal to no CNC access, and drills/cuts/welds everything in shop, or if something is sent it's sent to a shop that a team member or mentor has access to use the machines in. The other has CNC access...Run by the shop owner, who is a team mentor, with students there! (If the manual machines weren't being used instead, that is.) Last I checked, the shop still supports an FRC team or two as a sponsor and mentor. Per FRC accounting rules, the only cost there is materials. And if they HAD to count CNC time, probably no more than $1K at $100/hr, easily.

Both teams make reasonably frequent trips to eliminations (and hopefully playoffs), I might add.