Quote:
Originally Posted by philso
With all the facilities and parts you have mentioned in your previous posts, I go a serious case of "shop envy". It is now a bit worse  |
At the rate of accumulation I have 8 Lowes 12 gallon plastic totes filled to the very top in storage. It got to the point I couldn't remember my inventory so I have an inventory spreadsheet. It's not quite as expensive as one might imagine: as I have been accumulating parts for years and only accelerated in recent months. I cleaned out quite a few MicroCenters nationwide after giving everyone several months and a ChiefDelphi thread to beat me to it. MicroCenter discounted most of the AndyMark parts down to 75% off. I routinely hit AndyMark's Tuesday deals. I'm also often the reason a few of you aren't winning your eBay auctions the last few months
and at least in a recent case that means I sponsored a team or so indirectly.
It's not just for me, at least I hope not, I am working towards setting up a MakerSpace with FRC resources available. Hence my growing portable MaxNC toolset with the T2 lathe and 10 mill. I am also doing modifications and repairs on them such that if someone breaks them I can fix them cheap and easy.
This is why I was going to build some robots anyway. I will be using smaller final robot dimensions when I get there. I want mine to fit in the largest TSA approved hardshell suit cases so I can take the robots and my portable CNC tools safely more places. This is more an educational exercise out of my pocket than a competitive exercise. It's just not practical for the most dedicated students to learn CNC and programming in 6-10 weeks and the high cost of CNC entry is daunting just to get to a point you realize you don't know G-Code from Rhino VBA
. (For anyone that points out the MaxNC machines are glorified Sherline/Taig machines: cutting wax for someone that knows no better is just as good on 1/3HP as it is on 10HP. Sure the feeds change and that just goes to reinforce the critical nature of that change.)
If this doesn't work out I will have to open a new web based FRC retailer
