My team is looking to upgrade our robo cart, and we’d love your recommendations for two things:
Portable Chairs: We’re looking for lightweight, portable chairs that are easy to store in our robot cart and can be used in the pit or for drive team while waiting in queue. We are looking for durability, comfort, and ease of deployment.
Organization Bins: Suggestions for bins that keep tools, parts, and miscellaneous items (zip ties) organized in the robot cart. Stackable, sturdy, and space-efficient options would be ideal!
What’s worked best for your team? Any specific brands, models, or creative setups we should consider?
For the bleachers we recently bought a set of 12 of these for our scouters:
These were okay, they’re at least more comfortable than bleachers. It’s hard to find something portable for that many people that isn’t bulky to transport. They can be rolled up for storage and transport.
Plano ProLatch 3700. I bought almost all of the ones 1293 has from the fishing aisle at Walmart (for another project that didn’t pan out), but other sporting goods retailers probably have it too. The reason this is so great: you can fit a ton of them on their spines in a KoP tote facing up. That layout is perfect for those “mile wide, inch deep” items in your stockpile, like cable ties or UltraPlanetary parts.
Harbor Freight StoreHouse bins. Mix of the big 8-bin one but also the 20-bin medium, which have the same footprint for stacking (though I prefer a rack storage setup so I don’t have to move bins to get to bins). Could also do the small one which fits two abreast on the bigger cases and shares commonality with the medium’s bins, but I think it’s a little too limited for FRC-scale hardware. Medium and large ones will hold so much hardware that you’ll start to be concerned about at least one smaller student’s ability to lift it.
We use a knockoff storehouse bin available on Amazon, brand isn’t really a factor, We chose it because the sides have only a small support at the lip, meaning we can make our own custom sliders pretty easily.
For seats, I’d love to find whatever 610 and 2056 use. 610 in 2022 had a 3 or 4 wide one piece folding chair bench, meaning their entire drive team can sit on one seat and it folds up like a normal camping chair. Looked comfy and durable, not sure where to get one.
We bought a bunch of Milwaukee Packout bins for organization. They’re extremely sturdy, stackable (with locking mechanisms), and come in a few different sizes. They were a perfect fit for our new pit structure, which is basically just a couple of Husky toolboxes with frames on top to hold the Packout bins. They’re a little on the pricey side, but if you can swing it, I would highly recommend them.
If you have some crafty people on your team and an excessive amount of plastic grocery bags you can make eco-friendly bleacher cushions with your team colors. This would probably work for pit cushions if you had something to put the cushions on.
Mostly just needed something with back support. They’re not amazing, but at least it makes scouting in uncomfortable bleachers a bit more tolerable for students.
We had a couple of the telescopic stools. The plastic cracked, broke suddenly (don’t recall specifically where) and a student wound up unexpectantly on thier butt.
As with many products, I would think the original was of fairly good quality and we likely purchased a less expensive alternative…
I try and suggest these anywhere I can (you’ll find several posts from me on here recommending them to teams), and it’s the perfect time of year because they’re on sale for $13 a piece at homedepot (US) right now!
Super robust quality, they have individual bins inside, so you can pull all your 10-32 x 1/2" SHCS (or whatever other small part) out and take to your workbench without taking the entire case/organizer. We’ve also printed custom bins that fit in here for smaller quantity items, or to hold our powerpole crimping tools.
