Anyone ever used Rush Gears as a Source?

[Matt Reiland]

After hearing about Rush many times on this board and never having used them we thought we would give them a try. We all see after their name that they are expensive but I figured that would be just a bit higher than Small Parts since Small Parts is only restocking gears from Boston and other manufacturers.

Let me tell you was I ever wrong! We went to order an 80 tooth 20 pitch 20 pressure angle gear, needed it in about a week. Just to get a quote on the gear you needed to fill out all of the account paper work, took over a day to process, then the quote came back.

[gets up from floor after nearly having heart attack]

per gear the price was over $900, yes that is in hundreds, we thought they maybe screwed up the decimal place since they were under $100 every where else. Nope. I think that Rush shouldn't even be listed as a source for FIRST type robots. After a bit more searching we found that Motion Industries had them all in stock at way under $100 each and they are ready for pickup in only 2 days. I think it would be beneficial if we get together a white paper or similar listing valid sources for the different materials that teams use. It could save allot of teams allot of time.