Remember, a big part of what FIRST is all about is giving students (and sometimes engineers!) a taste of '"real world engineering." It is an opportunity to see how practicing engineers solve problems, overcome hurdles, and attempt to triumph over adversities small and large.
Hmmm. Your suppliers aren't delivering on time? Parts on back order for longer than you expected?
Welcome to the real world.
So what to do now? You can sit here and whine about the poor performance of SPI, or you can try to solve your problem. I would like to make the following suggestion - why don't we change the tone of this thread to: "I can't get part xxx from SPI in time, can anyone help me find an alternate supplier FAST?"
I'll offer up the first suggestion. We are on two-week backorder for 1/4" pitch chain from SPI. Ordered a week ago, when we checked at the end of this week we were told it would be another two weeks. We found a company called Motion Industries that carried the identical part. Turns out they have about 500 outlets around the country (check their locator at
http://www.motionindustries.com/ ). A quick 30-minute car trip to their nearest location, and problem solved. While there, a quick wander through their warehouse revealed that they carried a lot of other gears, chain, sprockets, bearings, etc. that SPI carries (I think that I even saw a whole pile of the Martin sprockets). I am probably going back this weekend with SPI catalog in hand to verify part similarities, and see if I can take care of all our back-order issues all at once.
-dave