[EricH]

If you do not have safety glasses, you need to get some. MINIMUM one pair per team member, but remember that you'll somehow have to account for lost glasses and people that want to visit while you're making chips (cutting, drilling, and filing all generate chips or dust, and some of those tend to throw chips). You could have every team member get a pair on their own, and just get about a dozen for "shop spares". Mark the team-owned ones so people will leave them in the shop...

Maybe a couple of pairs of gloves, too, for jobs that don't involve spinning or reciprocating tools (or robot parts).


As far as measurement, there's a couple I haven't seen yet...
Scale: Length. Looks like a ruler, but has marks for decimal portions of an inch. Use this as your straightedge--get a couple in different lengths. McMaster has 'em in the $10-$25 range.
Scale: weight. For some reason, knowing how much a part weighs before it goes on the robot is very useful--small scale for that, and another that can handle the whole robot (say around the last week of build...), will come in handy.