End of Year Purchases

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Shop vac?

If you don't have one of these, get one. It's really great for cleaning up after a long build session. (And if you share a room with another teacher/class/group, they'll love you forever for leaving the space clean.)

For the computing parts, you could go with Vex parts--they are nice--but what about a laptop or two for your programmer and/or web team? Or a decent box for animation work? Or what about a printer you can bring easily to competitions? (Trust me, they're handy for a lot of things.) A good printer for the shop, if you don't have one, is also a great thing to have.

[GB330033]

I fixed the first post, apparently my computer didn't like just posting once. Thanks for all the prompt responses. I'll go through them in order...

Steve W: Table saw, eh? I didn't think about that, simply because I associate table saws with wood, mostly. How much use does your table saw get during the season? What sort of blade would you suggest?

sanddrag: In my experience DeWalts are excellent, however, I'll take a look at some cheaper options. The only reason we're looking to get 263 pieces is because we're trying to spend money. If we were on a tight budget, we'd definately cut down. We have three sets of bits, but they're all missing a few here and there, hence why I'm looking at buying a new, complete set. We have a brand new set of taps that didn't get much use this year, and we have a decent vice. We lack a mill/lathe, but I don't think anyone on our team has the skill to use those tools. We don't have many (if any) engineering mentors, the students do everything on their own. We have mostly garage knowledge. We've got all the rest of those too (Angle grinder, circ saw, compressor, shop vac), except the arbor press. To be honest, I have no idea what that is.

KenWittlief: Sounds interesting, I'll have to look into it.

Billfred: Our vac is decent, so we keep the shop looking clean MOST of the time, but not all. Like I said, we already have two laptops, so we're not looking for computers. Both of the teacher sponsors are computer teachers that have full labs, so we can also use those machines anytime we want. A printer is a good idea, and was suggested by one of the teacher sponsors. She wanted to look at getting a specialty printer for our "spirit" items, and everything else. Good idea.

Once again, thanks for the suggestions so far.

[Steve W]

Our table saw is in use every day. We cut all aluminum and wood and lexan on it. Always have straight cuts and square corners. As for the blade, I will have to get that info once I return from holidays. Look out Florida, here I come.

[Beth Sweet]

Oh man, extra money at the end of the year, wonder what that feels like...

Entering off-season competitions are always so much fun. So much of the pressure is gone because it hasn't been an insane few weeks before and afterward and your minds aren't going into robo-overload.

Obviously stocking up on the tools is a good thing to do, however don't forget other factions of your team. Do you have some sort of a PR team? Maybe they could use some materials to help them out. An animation team? Perhaps they need a new mouse or two. (ok, that probably wasn't a good example, but you get what I'm saying)

The money could also be used as seed money for summertime fundraisers (pasta dinners etc)...

[chrisinmd]

Wow.
I wish my team had this 'problem' Unfortunately, this year we need to raise about $2500 to cover expenses over this past season.

But I do understand the 'use it or lose it', and definitely try to maximize what you purchase, don't waste money for the sake of it. You may not think you need it now but as your team grows you may find yourself wishing you had bought a table saw or mill/lathe.

We use our table saw all the time, as Steve W said, to cut wood and lexan primarily, but with a good blade, you can rip aluminum to size. Works like a charm. Ours is a Delta saw, only a few years old, with the unifence and extender table. Something like this

This was our team's fifth (maybe fourth?) year in FIRST, and we found ourselves using the mill/lathe more than ever. One of our seniors is very skilled on the mill and lathe from working outside of school, and he was very busy this year! We made custom gearboxes for the FP drive train, and they worked like a charm. Even simple things like drilling holes in the ends of shafts is made easier on the lathe. One like ours would fit nicely in your budget, a medium sized combination like this

It would be a great opportunity to teach students how to use it and maybe even learn yourself! I have done a few things with it and while I'm still learning a lot, it is not complicated to use, it just takes practice and patience. Remember to budget accordingly for tooling and accessories, they cost as much as the actual machine. Somebody might jump in here with a more knowledgeable opinion.

As far as electronics go, oscilloscopes are nice to have, we have a large Textronix scope that works great for testing signals and circuits.
A battery load tester would be a great thing to have, make sure your batteries are being maintained properly. Also maybe one of those five or six battery charging stations to keep batteries fresh in competitions.

I could go on all day with this wish list, but I'll stop here, that's long enough.

-Chris

[Donut]

Must this money be used to buy tools, or can it also be used to buy parts or something? I'm sure you could spend on money on sensors or something to play with in the off season (even if it is for future members).

You could always try upgrading some things as well. I don't know how your facilties are, but if you're like us, you may want to use that extra money to get more storage space to hold things. Or you may want to increase the bandwidth/size allowed for your website. Or you could also buy a better camera for your PR team. Or you could buy a high power DVD burner to make team DVDs. Stuff like that is always good.

[Simon Strauss]

I Agree with Sanddrag, we are going into our fifth year and are buying a mill due to our realization that all teams need one, and i personally would not be able to live without my lathe. May i also suggest a good set of shelves, i dont know what your shop is like but in my mind when you have a shop, organization is next to priceless and it is always good to have a nice portable layout for your pits if your room already is.

[GB330033]

Once again, going down the list of replies:

Beth Sweet: Our biggest non-construction team is Spirit, and they're likely getting a new printer. We also have an extra account for Spirit stuff, so that's set. Unfortunately we can't "put away" any of this money, it has to be spent.

chrisinmd: How much skill goes into using a mill/lathe? From what I understand, you really have to know what you're doing. Without any engineering mentors, I doubt that the team members would be able to utilize a mill/lathe the way other teams can. However, if it's not too tough to learn, we might have to look into buying one. Any suggestions on where to get one?

Donut: No, this does not have to be used to purchase tools. The two accounts are dedicated to "Building Supplies" and "Computer Supplies." I suppose we could go for sensors, but in the three years that the team has been competing, our first time to use a sensor was in the elimination rounds this year, and that didn't turn out well...

nycpunk: We have a bunch of storage space, shelves included. Good idea though.

[Simon Strauss]

Originally Posted by GB330033

chrisinmd: How much skill goes into using a mill/lathe? From what I understand, you really have to know what you're doing. Without any engineering mentors, I doubt that the team members would be able to utilize a mill/lathe the way other teams can. However, if it's not too tough to learn, we might have to look into buying one. Any suggestions on where to get one?

Although these two tools do require much skill to become useful, the Internet is a great thing, as long as you have done some research on their usages and techniques you can almost teach yourself if you have someone watching to insure your safety. If you want some help finding a good one go to either http://da.harborfreight.com/cpisearc...athe&Submit=Go
or PM me and i can help, i can also help you find good lathe sites if you wish and photocopy you some pages out of a retro metal milling text book that you have, so contact me if you want those.

[sanddrag]

I got a heck of a deal on this lathe and I am much enjoying it. You've got to know how to use it though. If you'd like to learn more, a good site is www.mini-lathe.com

[lukevanoort]

Maybe you should look into getting all your cutting tools diamond coated, it would greatly increase their life, and maybe reduce the heat from using them. (Less friction that isn't directly involved in cutting) Just getting some aluminum stock for next year could eat up that much money easily and be worth it too. While you're at it you could experiment with fiberglass. As for additional power tools... I can't help you, all we have is two (old) single speed drills, a broken dremel (barely runs, it's so fried), and an old busted drill press. (My father and I also brought in our miter saw, it really saved our butts) How about aluminum welding equipment? Pricey and useful. For the computers, I'd recommend getting a Dell dual proc (maybe dual proc, dual core) server with lots of RAM and SCSI RAID for your animation team and maybe web serving. A couple of nice old 802.11b wireless switches with high gain antennas would be great for throwing up a network at competition to keep a scouting database and other info on. Although there is a rule against it at competitions, (I don't know why) you could look into one of those wireless broadband things for Internet access in various spots. Some dual core laptops using the Intel Core Duo wouldn't go wrong, massive battery life, great for, say a computerized scouting database with automatic ranking functions for choosing alliance partners. (I'm sorry, I used to be diehard AMD, but Core Duo has me almost converted)

[Chris Marra]

Some quick electronic things that might start to add up:
A Good Digital Multimeter
A Good Tachometer
Wire Stockpile for the season

Also, if you have a CAD or animation team, consider a high end workstation for them to share, since school computers never tend to be very well suited to CAD work.

[DarkJedi613]

I would say look into raw materials. Aluminum and lexan can get pretty expensive. Plus you'll have the material ready to build with next year.

Tools no one seems to have mentioned - hand grinder, saws-all.

[Pavan Dave]

Im electrical. But I would say, a good multimeter and some potentiometers... those are very commonly used on my team and i saw many of them on other robots too so just my 2 cents

Pavan

[Not2B]

-Mini Lathe and tools
-Mini Mill and tools
-Materials - bars, rods, sheets - Aluminum, Plastics
-ANSI #25 chain or any item you use alot
-Grinders are so useful, get cutoff wheels as well
-I like the table saw idea - maybe we need one too
-Extra IFI relays
-Extra IFI speed controllers
-Oscilliscope would be interesting
-Computer supplies - what does the average road warrior take with them? Scanners, Digital camera, Printer, bags, etc...
-Parts for an off season, demo bot?
-If it was us, I'd go buy about 2000 1/4-20 nuts and bolts of various sizes and 10000 pop rivits of different sizes - so we wouldn't run out any time soon.
-Tap and Die set - a nice one
-BIG Arbor Press and a set of broaches for keyways.
-Does anyone know if the table top breaks and shears are any good at www.grizzly.com ? That could be fun, and easy to learn the basics.
-Big Ol' Box of Safety glasses and First Aid kits (Those are build supplies, right?)
-If you had a mentor willing to try it out, a small home foundry would be interesting - cast your own parts... but that might be a little out there, and SAFETY and KNOWLEDGE are a MUST.

I think I spent WAY more than you have...

Let me ask this - what do you want to do or try next year?