Recommended Tools and Machinery for Your Team's Machine Shop

[Garrett.d.w]

Originally Posted by roystur44

Scotchman Cold Saw
Bridgeport Knee Mill with DRE
Rotary table for the knee mill
V blocks
100 gallon compressor
Pneumatic pop rivet gun
Makerbot 3D printer
Jett Lathe with DRE
Shop Vac
Drill press
Pneumatic rivnut gun
Notcher
4 foot metal shear
4 foot Electric press brake
press brake dies V and gooseneck
Tig Welder
Welding table
Grinders
Band Saw
Reamers
Arbor press
Hex broaching tools
Haas CNC Mini Mill with a indexer $$$
Gibbs Cam
SolidWorks
Fabricam
If you had the big bucks a Mazak 2000 watt laser cutter.

This! but my list is a little more basic (and in a slightly different order).

BIG drill presses (we like to have two) with their own vices, center drills, wigglers, etc.
Height gauge + surface plate (aka, sink cutout from your local countertops place) makes layout easy and accurate.
Harbor freight calipers (only buy the 6 inch digital ones, they are $10 on sale)
Horizontal/ vertical bandsaw. For us, we can do 90% of what we want to cut in the horizontal setting.
Dedicated Disk Sander (Stand Alone)
Dedicated Belt Sander (Stand Alone)

Then comes the "advanced stuff" This is what you get when you want to get fancy with your bot.

CAD capable computers (Autodesk supplies free student licences to their software) and a printer, this allows you to prototype faster and build smarter. Added bonus = you can print part drawings out and then you don't have to explain them quite as much
Mill (DRO optional) and appropriate tooling, this opens the world to precision machining.
Harbor freight hobby lathe, good for spacers, shaft couplings and bushings (not much else).
Dedicated metal vertical band saw.

And naturally, money and space (and insurance) allowing: we get to dream BIG
CNC Mill
CNC Router
Proper Engine Lathe
Maker bot
Small laser cutter (or a big sponsorship )

Anyway, Its your shop. Dream big and then work to make it happen. The "basic" category lets you build most things in FRC with a relatively new team. As you become more experienced, you will find that expanding the shop's capabilities to the "fancy" category will allow you to build anything. Getting even nicer into the "dream" category, well, that's when things get light and pretty (think robotnauts )