Pre-season purchases

[CeeCee McShane]

Quick question from a second year team - what do you generally buy in your preseason? What would you recommended we buy as a team that currently has little more than what came in the rookie kit?
Thanks!
Carol, Co-coach Team 3585, Rogue Robots of 4-H

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by CeeCee McShane

Quick question from a second year team - what do you generally buy in your preseason? What would you recommended we buy as a team that currently has little more than what came in the rookie kit?
Thanks!
Carol, Co-coach Team 3585, Rogue Robots of 4-H

This is a bit of an open-ended question. I assume you mean both tools and robot parts. It's difficult to answer without knowing more about what you are trying to accomplish this year. Give us more information and maybe we can help.

[apalrd]

We usually stock up on the metal that we commonly use. 1x1 aluminum angle (1/8" and 1/16") is VERY popular around here, we usually order quite a bit each year (and use a lot for OCCRA as well).

As a second year team, you probably don't have a ton of money. Look at the things you consumed a lot of last year (aside from Mtn. Dew). Things like metal, fasteners, and wire can be used next year if you don't use it all this year, and as such are fairly safe to buy in the pre-season.

[Nemo]

You could start with things that you are nearly guaranteed to need:

Bumper materials (noodles, fabric, plywood, fasteners)
CIM motors
Wire
Fasteners
Jaguar and/or Victor motor controllers
Controllers (gamepads / joysticks / custom controls of your team's choice)

If your team has particular building materials that you know how to use well (or want to learn), you could have some of that on hand:
Sheet aluminum, T-slot extrusion, wood, PVC pipe, AndyMark C Channel, angle aluminum, box aluminum, polycarbonate, etc.

If your team has a type of drive that you like (or want to learn), you can buy parts for that and build one in the offseason. Then you can use any items next year if desired if they are still unmodified COTS parts. Includes wheels, sprockets, spacers, bearings, gearboxes, etc.

Strategically investing in tools is smart. Getting safety glasses that aren't all scratched up is pretty nice.

What you'd want to buy preseason depends on a bunch of things. If you have an offseason project in mind, that would tend to drive what you buy. If resources are very limited, one would probably want to get things that are a safe bet to be useful on next year's robot. If you want to have greater flexibility when you find out the game, you'd want to get tools and raw materials that can be used for a variety of tasks. If you want to get off the ground quickly next year, you might want to choose a style of 6WD (or some other drive), build one in the offseason, and have the components ready to go for the start of 2012.

[Tom I]

Best advice for stocking up on supplies would be to look at what you used this past year and go off of that. Good thing there's a Bill of Materials to get a good idea

As for raw stock items from a mechanical side of things, I'd suggest standard stock items, such as 80/20 aluminum, aluminum box, C, and L channel, Lexan, PVC pipe and PVC Lumber (my team has found it to be a very useful material), bolts/nuts, and standard axle sizes.
These are the things you should order now and look for good prices and not worry about shipping, you're almost guaranteed to find a use for this stuff. Even if you don't, it's better to have something you don't need than need something you don't have!

One piece of advice for a team still kinda green Standardize the materials you use! My team uses 1/4-20 bolts and 7/16ths nuts for practically everything that needs a bolt/nut, this saves a ton of time and effort looking for the right drill bit/wrench.
Hope this helps, and good luck in your 2nd season!

[msimon785]

When considering items to purchase during the preseason, it is my suggestion to go as general and generic as is possible. There is nothing worse (and I say this from experience) than making 1-2 McMaster Carr orders a night.

I suggest that you purchase all hardware that you might from McMaster before the start of season. This would include (but is not limited to) complete sets of all bolts, nuts, nylocks, and washers that your team uses during season. When doing so, set standardizations for bolt sizes that you use.

It would also be wise to purchase bumper hardware. If you choose to do so, add a bunch of T-nuts and corresponding hardware in addition to pool noodles and the necessary fabrics.

You may choose to install a shelving unit to store the purchased hardware. We did this and I consider it one of the best decisions we made as a team.

As others are saying, it would probably be a good idea to stock up on extra aluminum with which to build the robot or prototype. In terms of prototyping, you could probably save at least two days during the design process if you acquired a bunch of extra plywood and lumber. This is a good investment that will hardly cost you anything significant.

Good Luck!

[CalTran]

Check your batteries as well. If you don't have at least 3 chargers and 4 batteries, I'd stock up. How's your pneumatics supplies looking? For our team, last year we basically hit our pneumatic limit simply because we ran out of solenoids. There's also the usual zip-ties, duct tape, WD-40, and Loc-tite to have handy. Some extra wires/connectors would be helpful too

[sanddrag]

#25 chain is a pretty safe bet. I wouldn't get much of anything else pre-season unless it was tools.

[Ninja_Bait]

We're buying zip ties, pool noodles, basic electronics parts, stock metal, and rotary tool accessories. (There's also some vector drive parts on the way, but not many people need that. )

Definitely buy more of what you use up (duct tape, zip ties, bolts etc.) and some more batteries. Also think about getting the new little cRIO.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Nemo

You could start with things that you are nearly guaranteed to need:

Bumper materials (noodles, fabric, plywood, fasteners)
CIM motors
Wire
Fasteners
Jaguar and/or Victor motor controllers
Controllers (gamepads / joysticks / custom controls of your team's choice)

Items bolded by me are things to be cautious about ordering. These are items that can easily be eliminated from the kit without warning no matter how likely you think they are. Proceed with your own caution when purchasing these until we see the 2012 rules.

Originally Posted by CalTran

Check your batteries as well. If you don't have at least 3 chargers and 4 batteries, I'd stock up.

What battery will be competition legal this year?
We're on the 3rd or 4th different battery in my tenure as a mentor so I would never reccomend a team with limited resources buy them until the season starts.

I agree with folks saying stock up on tools, fasteners, and raw material. Those are items you can use no matter what. Anything like controllers, other than the FRC specific cRIO that we know is coming, is at risk of not being in the rules if FIRST decides on a whim to eliminate it. I can think of many kit items and rules that were thought unchangeable over the years that we were proven wrong on.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Carol,
Now is an excellent time to buy into tools. If you have the basics, then I would add the following...
Flush cutting wire cutter
Chain Break
At least one multimeter. (Some nice ones are still available for less than $50)
A set of both English and Metric Allen wrenches.
A nice machinist's square
A good hacksaw with several blades
A couple of files, or a set including different lengths and cuts
A couple of drill sets
Pop Rivet tool, rivets (different lengths and material) and several of the correct size drills for installation and removal.
If you are thinking of using Anderson Power Product electrical terminals, then crimping tool for such connections. (Search Anderson here on CD for recent discussions of tools and terminals.
MCM Electronics (www.mcmelectronics.com) has nice zip cord wire. Get a 500 ft. roll of #18, #14 or #12, and #10. You will have it for years to come and it make wiring easier as the red and black wire are bonded together.
Ty-wraps of varying sizes and lengths.
Heatshrink for wire insulation in various sizes.

[roystur44]

A good purchase would be a roll away tool box that is labled where the tools should go. Training the students to pick up and put back the tools after use is high up on our training list.

Having a nice transport cart for the robot is a good off season project.

Organize your wiring tools you use to make pwm cables, molex crimpers, heavy gage wire strippers.

Battery load tester

Rivnut gun, pneumatic pop rivet guns, small arbor press for bearings.

Roy

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

What battery will be competition legal this year?
We're on the 3rd or 4th different battery in my tenure as a mentor so I would never reccomend a team with limited resources buy them until the season starts.

I've always wondered why FIRST is so hesitant to release the very basics of the KOP in the Pre-Season. I can't imagine that a team would gain a substantial advantage by knowing what speed controllers and battery models would be allowed next season.

One of my favorite things to stock up on in the weeks leading up to build season are prototyping materials. Wood, PVC, Small Wheels, etc, that can be thrown together into a quick prototype on Saturday or Sunday are always nice.

[ebarker]

If you really want to squeeze a dollar and maximize your purchase I'd recommend that you do the following exercise, which happens to be something we did over the summer.

1) Using an excel spreadsheet we created a table of everything in the KOP plus everything we had bought the past few years.

2) then we did an inventory of all of our raw parts, with cost. great exercise, you can learn how much money is laying around.

3) then we made another spreadsheet of our master wish list. this includes tools, parts, machine, trailer, shirts, everything. It is a huge list.

4) Then you do nothing.

5) Sit on this information ready to pull the trigger on purchases, but only after you KNOW you will need it, not THINK that you need it.

After all, the only thing you can assume about next year is a cRio and a Microsoft Kinect.

Just in the past few months we have saved a ton of money by doing nothing because we ultimately determined other solutions or that we didn't really need it right now.

Planning is more important than spending right now !!
.

[Mark McLeod]

Engineers can be bought....