End of Year Purchases

[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.