Your favorite/most useful tool?

[Lord Nerdlinger]

needle nose plyers to pick all the metal shards out of my hand

i think i have a total of 33 cuts / gashes now

[Austin]

Well, ever since I've been on the Technokat's I have dispised our cordless drills...they could barely cut through plastic!!! Much to my delight, we recently picked up a good ol' 1/2" Makita M-Force 18V cordless drill...now this has to be my favorite tool. You can cut through anything with this drill...and it never bogs down! it's amazing. Just the other day I popped in a 1-3/16" bit(though the top of it is 1/2") for comedy's sake...but it fit! Ooooh yeah. Spins like a charm. Oh yeah, and it's got NiMH batteries...not those annoying NiCd batts that anger me.

[Mr. Ivey]

Milwaukee cordles Sawzall, Milwaukee cordless Drill + Craftsman carbid bits, my 40 year old set of end wrenches, my 30 year old bearing puller, my new pnumatic tubing cutter (hey stick your finger here), and finally a Craftsman Lathe from 1953 that I had to make parts on. Lets not forget a piece of 3 foot pipe for "convincing" stubborne bolts when needed.
Ivey

[Tyler 783]

My favorite tool is the lathe that has a plaque on it that says " Conforms to the wartime measures act of 1940. For all those who are not Canadian that act was abolished after WW2.

[JVN]

Deburring tool.

[Alan Anderson]

My favorite tool is a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red. Really kicks the coding part of my brain into high gear!

[ZACH P.]

I love this 7/16 and 3/8 hex driver I aquired from a verizon guy... Its sorta like a double-ended nut driver. Who needs rachets?

[Pavan Dave]

Multimeter or Electrical Tape.

Usually 99% chance of them being in my pocket during the build season. And a 99.9% chance of them being in my pocket during Competition.

Pavan.

[lukevanoort]

I would say miter saw, but then I got to thinking, instead of what is the most useful at the time, what would be the worst to be stuck without for the season. You can substitute other things for wrenches and such, but the thing we actually ran out of and spent the last 3 or so days of build season without tops my list, zip ties. Without them electrical work ground to a halt as did prototyping mounts.

[lbarger]

The optical center punch and a plotter that prints 1:1 scale for templates.

[seannoseworthy]

CNC Machine, preferably a Haas.

[Petef911]

My favorite tool would have to be our teams horizontal/vertical band saw. We picked it up at Harbor Freight. That thing will seriously cut through anything and is very durable. Only problem is that its really heavy. But the benefits out weigh the negatives.


My favorite tool that i use outside of robotics and also in robotics is my DeWalt cordless reciprocating saw. Its 18V of raw power and can chop through anything that i have put it up against.

[JCharlton]

I'll also second the pneumatic pop-riveter. Last year we picked up a foot-shear and finger brake (not as dangerous as they sound!) to do sheet metal work, they built most of our bot this year.

Another must have for anyone working with sheet metal are step drills.

Of all the tools though I really couldn't live without the shop broom...

[CalTran]

Wago, wirecutter/crimps, and a soldering iron. And my camera.

[boomergeek]

weight to point score impact of a widget defines much of the game...