Where did your team get its machine tools?

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

Where did your team get its machine tools?

Simple. We didn't. Even if we had the money for we don't have room for it. Actually, we don't even have a room. We share the room with the physics department, so we always have to clean up at the end of the day. The closest thing we have to machining equipment is a drill press. We had to mount some of our bigger tools, like the drill press, to a cart with locking wheels for easy storage/deployment.

We outsource everything that needs to be machined. We have some companies (and parents with access to such tools) do machining for us. It has a long turn around time though. At BEST, we can only have things done overnight. Bigger jobs take a few days. We've been trying to help out the machinists the best we can though. I heard something about a new rule soon to be implimented that anything that goes out to be machined must be CADed first. This way, you don't bother the machinists with some odd request about wanting a "bracket with a hole in the middle" with no numbers. Another theory is that if you can't CAD it, it's probably too complicated to be machined.

[Ian Curtis]

In our first year we made it by using one mentor's machine shop in his barn on weekends and a mini bandsaw and hand drill (power of course). However in our second year the vocational school that hosts us let us use their machines after taking an 8 hour safety course. Right now we can drill, mill, and lathe, and bandsaw. The mentor still does the welding at home but in the coming years we hope to get someone authorized to weld at the school becuase most of our construction takes place in the 72 hours leading up to ship time (and there are usually team members at the school for around 60 hours of that time.)