What would you buy if you could?

[JesseK]

Only thing I would consistently purchase instead of build would be the drive train transmissions. Next year we may mill our own wheels, but usually those are purchased as well. Past that, I only ever see us purchasing sensors.

I think we will always design our own tensioners/pullies simply because the specific need must fit the application, orientation, and sizing constraints. I think we'll also always design any sort of nitinol (memory wire) applications if FIRST ever rewrites the rules to make it useable. Nitinol isn't that powerful of a mechanism but like pneumatics it has many places where it's useful and desired.