Hardware, Tools, and Storage Questions

[TheHolyHades1]

Hello.

We've recently taken to reorganizing our build lab, and we're planning on making it a much more efficient space in the near future (after upcoming competitions are over). We've realized that if we can make our hardware organization system more efficient so that things are accessible when we need, we may be able to do things a lot quicker. And, it'll make the build lab a safer place to work in general.

So, I've got a couple questions:

1. What sort of system would you recommend for organizing assorted hardware (ie. hex and socket head bolts, nails, screws, etc)?
2. How do you recommend dealing with [i]excess[i] tools? We've got quite a lot of unused wrenches/ratchets/etc, and we just want to keep extras of the frequently used sizes (with the rest in storage, not trashed).
3. At what point would you say raw material (wood+metal) can be discarded?
4. What should be done with old control system parts which are now deprecated in FIRST?

Thanks,
Hades

[Jacob Bendicksen]

I'll answer #4, since that's the one that I'm most familiar with. I assume by "old control system parts" you mean older versions of the KOP electronics (like the cRIO will be after this year). I think your best option is to use them for a practice/demo bot. They still work fine (I'd assume), so there's no point in getting rid of them. Building a robot that you can use for demos instead of your competition bot can make things a lot easier: you can customize it to make it better for demos (higher clearance, more weather-proof-ness, etc.) and you don't have to take your competition bot to demos, which can be nice if you have offseason events that you're planning on attending. We drove our 2013 bot hard at several demos between St. Louis and our offseason events, and had to do an overhaul in order to make it competition-worthy again.

If you don't feel like doing that, you could try selling them, but I'm not sure how much luck you'd have there.

[DonRotolo]

1. Flat bins like these. Excess should be stored elsewhere.
2. We put a big pile of them into a tote, with an inventory, and put them into storage. If we need something we look at the inventory before hunting down the bin.
3. Wood, we toss pretty easily. Metal, if it is shorter than a bin, it generally gets recycled, but some shapes can be kept a little bit shorter. It depends a bit on the value of the piece and its condition.
In general, we have a scrap bin where we go for bits and pieces used for prototypes and such. If it is just a small cutoff it goes in the recycling bucket, otherwise in the scrap bin. At the end of the year, or when the bin gets too full, we sort, shorts get tossed into recycle.
4. If we can't use them for practice, we offer them to team members with the caveat that they must use them for something.

[Mr V]

For organizing hardware we use Stanley bins similar to the ones in Don's link but for the majority of them we use the deeper version, they are better suited to things that are larger or you would want to keep a larger stock of like bolts and rivets. We use the ones pictured for terminals and other smaller items. To store those we built a shelf with spacing so just one of the larger boxes fits on a shelf. The shelf and front of the box are labeled so it is easy to grab the needed items and make sure they are put back in the proper location. We used to stack a number of them on a single shelf but invariably you always need the box on the bottom of the stack.