Recommended Tools and Machinery for Your Team's Machine Shop

[jmiller18]

Best tool to have ever is a sonic screwdriver.

The close second is organization, sadly for my team this isn't a joke.

The incredibly close third is safety glasses.

My team's shop is a converted wood shop, but just switched blades on the saws and bits for the drill(press)s. If you guys tend to do complex designs, then a mill would be great for you. If you decide to get a 3d printer for prototyping, go with printrbot, they are really cheap kits and the designer actually has video tutorials to assemble them.

[brynnanotbrenda]

Originally Posted by jmiller18

Best tool to have ever is a sonic screwdriver.

The close second is organization, sadly for my team this isn't a joke.

The incredibly close third is safety glasses.

My team's shop is a converted wood shop, but just switched blades on the saws and bits for the drill(press)s. If you guys tend to do complex designs, then a mill would be great for you. If you decide to get a 3d printer for prototyping, go with printrbot, they are really cheap kits and the designer actually has video tutorials to assemble them.

These would probably also be handy. Especially the organization. We just operate in the schools wood shop, which the high school shares witht the middle school. And we steal all our hand tools from the middle school cabinet, it's kind of pathetic.

[Pendulum^-1]

Our drill bits were always a mess, just thrown into a bin of whatever sort was available. I really didn't want to take the time to construct an organizer for drill bits.

Then we found this drill bit organizer:
http://www.fastenal.com/web/products/details/0346712

Right now, the drill bit organizers are on clearance, less than $50 including shipping. The really great feature is that it has a metal drill bit sizer on the top ledge. Students just stick the drill bits into the sizer, figure out the drill bit size, then put the drill bit into the right bin.

We got ours in mid-December 2014. It has worked out much better for my team than I ever expected. I highly recommend it, or at least making your own version of it.