Organization Methods

[pmangels17]

Originally Posted by bigbeezy

Do teams have any creative ways of organizing scrap materials or any processes that ensure that this material gets used prior to a new stick?

We have a cabinet that looks like a cross between a metal file cabinet and an old-school library card cabinet. All the drawers are labelled with a specific size and wall thickness of extruded stock, and we keep all our shorts (anything about 14" or under, down to stuff only a couple inches long) in there, and look their first before cutting a new piece. It takes a bunch of space to have every stock size we used organized, and some sizes need multiple drawers, but it's worth it to always be able to grab a piece and be able to start machining right away. We do a similar thing for shaft stock and spacer material, but with a smaller cabinet. Try hitting up garage sales and second-hand stores, and you will probably be able to find a drawer system for very little money that gets the job done.

[BariSaxGuy]

This year our robot used a system of hooks to stack totes. After we finish our off-season events, we're going to take those hooks off the robot, hang them on the wall, and use them to hod our totes, and use the totes for parts storage. Some of our totes are different colors, so we'll be using sort of a color coding system to organize them

[bigbeezy]

Originally Posted by pmangels17

We have a cabinet that looks like a cross between a metal file cabinet and an old-school library card cabinet. All the drawers are labelled with a specific size and wall thickness of extruded stock, and we keep all our shorts (anything about 14" or under, down to stuff only a couple inches long) in there, and look their first before cutting a new piece.

That sounds like a good way of doing it. We don't have too much space to work with but could probably build something similar to this.

[GeeTwo]

We haven't found anything that works yet. However, just yesterday, we created a quartermaster department, with a dedicated mentor and a few students. The rule is now that only those individuals can enter the kitchen storeroom. I don't know if they've worked out how to manage "project boxes" which we've used over the years to keep all of the half-manufactured parts and assemblies and custom-purchased hardware for a project together. I'm hoping that they won't change it much other than to ensure that we keep tools out of the boxes, and dismantle them as soon as the project is over, both of which have been an issue in the past.