Anyone else crippled by no supply of parts?

FIRST General Forum
1

Well, this is my first post to the Chief Delphi board, and now I’m going to vent some serious pent-up frustration. This is my team’s second year, and after our rookie year last year (When we had no support from any engineers, and made several bone-headed mistakes including wrapping an axle with electrical tape to make it fit, mounting casters instead of front wheels in a two wheel drive system, and not remembering to test the strength of our drive train while fully weighted down and drawing a lot of extra power from the battery that the rest of our systems required), we felt that we knew a lot more about how to build a decent robot. Well, we’ve got a design that looks pretty good now but we just recieved word that most of our drive system won’t arrive until next thursday (assuming we actually get “next day” delivery). This wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t told us a week and a half ago that it would take 3 to 5 days for us to recieve the parts. We still haven’t recieved the rest of our kit of parts from F.I.R.S.T. (retro-reflective tape and the light would be nice), and does anyone out there know where in the world you can find the mounting for this year’s seat motors? Of course, as mentioned in many other threads already, Small Parts is basically out of parts, and now the various stores in our area are out of those same parts.

Well, if worst comes to worst, we still have our mock-up for this year and last year’s stripped down frame (it can perfom great tricks like “roll,” “play-dead,” and my personal favorite, “tip-over”)

2

I hear your pain man.

We got our light, tape and connectors yesturday (in canada). They said they were shipping to Rookies first (us) so expect yours soon id imagine.

I recall talk that the seat motor mount isnt included this year because the company stopped using them (is this right?)

SPI has dropped the ball, most teams have been wronged by that. (Say what you will about recession, but in no way is failing to stock up products you KNOW you will sell a good business decision)

My teacher and I have a moto about our robot/team: “It will all work out in the end, please God make it all work out in the end”

3

Possibly FIRST could give an extra week of building time to the teams that have had problems with parts that are not their fault… NAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH.
This is the stress mode and is to be considered part of the test. 10 points to those who over come.
Seems like we go through this every year but some how we all over come.
Nick237 :confused:

4

*Originally posted by Jordan A. *
**I hear your pain man.

We got our light, tape and connectors yesturday (in canada). They said they were shipping to Rookies first (us) so expect yours soon id imagine.

I recall talk that the seat motor mount isnt included this year because the company stopped using them (is this right?)

SPI has dropped the ball, most teams have been wronged by that. (Say what you will about recession, but in no way is failing to stock up products you KNOW you will sell a good business decision)

My teacher and I have a moto about our robot/team: “It will all work out in the end, please God make it all work out in the end” **

SPI fails to stock up every year on parts (back when we couldn’t buy aluminum from wherever they’d always run out of aluminum; you’d think they’d learn after awhile).

As far as the quote goes, FIRST basically reminds me of the quote form Shakespeare in Love: “It’ll work out.” “How?” “I don’t know. It just does.”

Matt

5

*Originally posted by nick reynolds *
**10 points to those who over come.
**

Great part about this year is even those who DONT overcome get 10 points :smiley:

6

SPI has had almost EVERYTHING we ordered.

What do you actually need to buy from them? Most of the stuff on our robot this year will be from non-SPI source or from SPI but on the Additional Hardware List so we didn’t HAVE to buy it from them.

Seriously, I think there are only a few specialty items (like Teflon sheets – why do we need them? Mind your p’s & q’s :wink: that we HAD to get from SPI if we wanted to use them.

Anyway, I just thought I should come to the defend of SPI again, not by saying that they haven’t screwed some teams up now and again because they obviously have, but by just saying that we have had a great year with ordering stuff from SPI – actually, perhaps the best year in the 7 we have participated.

Just one man’s point of view.

Joe J.

7

Helical gears…that’s what we need…helical gears…

SPI says it’ll take 10 days…that give us 3 days to build things…

We need helical gears…any takers?

8

*Originally posted by 401Mentor *
**Helical gears…that’s what we need…helical gears…

SPI says it’ll take 10 days…that give us 3 days to build things…

We need helical gears…any takers? **

buy them somewhere else!!! like mcmaster. gears=on additional parts list.

9

We’re working on finding it…

Apparently, McMasters didn’t have it. We love McMasters

10

*Originally posted by Joe Johnson *
**SPI has had almost EVERYTHING we ordered.

What do you actually need to buy from them? Most of the stuff on our robot this year will be from non-SPI source or from SPI but on the Additional Hardware List so we didn’t HAVE to buy it from them.

Seriously, I think there are only a few specialty items (like Teflon sheets – why do we need them? Mind your p’s & q’s :wink: that we HAD to get from SPI if we wanted to use them.

Anyway, I just thought I should come to the defend of SPI again, not by saying that they haven’t screwed some teams up now and again because they obviously have, but by just saying that we have had a great year with ordering stuff from SPI – actually, perhaps the best year in the 7 we have participated.

Just one man’s point of view.

Joe J. **

What ended up happening is that since small parts is one of the three sources that people are allowed to use parts from, a lot of teams just go directly to small parts for gears and chains and sprockets… People did that because they see SPI as source of “small parts” ever since the beginning, and FIRST didn’t make suggestions of online sources in the manual for places to buy them.

And a lot of teams doesn’t understand how important the additional hardware list is, or even the importance of reading through the whole manual. That’s why FIRST and this forum get a lot of questions, such as, “can we use belts on the robot?” or “can we use more than 3 drill motors?”

Maybe we got to come up with a letter that goes to ALL teams explaining how important this is. Knowing exactly what they can, and cannot use is important for designing the robot.

It doesn’t have to be FIRST who do this… As long as we can get FIRST to forward it to all teams. Maybe, a letter titled: “the guide to FIRST robotics competition manual” :wink:

Just trying to make both our’s and FIRST’s life easier… Imagine how much less questions there will be if everyone read through the manual, which they are supposed to, but not everyone understand that.

11

*Originally posted by 401Mentor *
**We’re working on finding it…

Apparently, McMasters didn’t have it. We love McMasters **

Try Allied Devices. They have a lot of gears.

Also, go to Bostongear.com or martinsprocket.com. You can look at the catalogues online, and they will point you to the retailer nearest to you that carries the gears. Almost every decent sized town that contains a machine shop has an outlet to buy gears from. One of the the above web sites will give you the address. It’s typically only a day or two for them to get the gears in once you visit their shop.

-Chris

12

They don’t use housing for the seat motors anymore?!?

Well, we just ordered a bunch of wheels from McMaster-Carr as a back up if our drive train arrives a little late or something doesn’t work with it. In addition we ordered 15 new safety glasses to replace the 20 or so which were stolen from our robotics “lab” (read: unsecured room in the basement full of broken furniture). As if this wasn’t bad enough, someone stole our duct tape. Thats a low blow. Sure you can’t use it on your final robot, but still…

Anyway, we discovered a machinist who is made us a worm gear system for our claw assembly tray, so we have an almost functioning system ALMOST completed. Unfortunately our robot’s movement is still restricted to…well, none whatsoever.

We ordered our treads and pulleys from Brecoflex, who won’t even allow us to drive down there and pick them up the day they’re finished.

In other news, I’m pushing for our team name to officially be “ghetto superstars” this year.