I’m starting a new FRC team at my school (after spending three years on FRC 811) and I’m trying to gather an understanding of what inventory is necessary. Here is the list I have so far, but I’m sure I’ve missed some things! Any other advice for starting a rookie team would be greatly appreciated.
Inventory
Electrical
Wire Strippers
Wire Cutters
Crimpers (Ratchet And PWM Size)
Jeweler’s Screwdrivers
Pliers (large, small, needle nose assort)
Multimeter
Voltmeter
DC Ammeter (Clamp-On)
PWM Ends (Male/Female)
PWM Casing
Power Pole Ends
Power Pole Casing
Ring Terminals
Fuses (20, 30, 40 Amp)
Electrical Tape
Heat Shrink
Heat Gun
Soldering Iron
Solder Vacuum
Butane Torch
Copper Wire (Assorted Gauges 12-26)
PWM Wires
Encoder Ribbon Cable (Min 4 Strand)
Wire Rack
6 AWG Wire, Lugs, Casing
12 V Batteries
CTR Battery Beak
12 V Battery Chargers
Battery Rack
Magnifying Glass Stand (pref w/Light)
Mechanical
Set screws
Bolts, nuts, washers
Sandpaper - various grits
Calipers (vernier or digital)
Allen wrench set(standard and metric)
Vice Grips
Rivet gun
Socket Wrench Set
Wrenches(crescent, open and box)
Chain and Sprocket Sets
Ball driver set / nut driver set
Box cutter
Bolt cutters
Deburring tool
Knife(x-acto, retractable utility)
Hacksaw
Tap and Die set
Drill bit/hex sets
Metal Files(flat and round)
WD-40 / lithium grease
Dremel Tool Set
Drill/Impact Driver
Machinery
Bandsaw
Table saw
Miter saw
Saber saw
Drill press
Appropriate blades for all
Angle and/or Bench grinder (preferably both)
Belt Sander
Benchtop lathe(?)
**General **
Shop-Vac
Zip ties
Duct tape
Bench Vise
Clamps (c-clamp, compression clamps)
Staple gun
Work gloves
Safety Glasses Set
Platform Scale
Versaplanetaries. A decent stock of VPs makes prototyping and mechanism design enormously easier. Also decide early on whether you’re standardizing on thunder hex, standard hex, or some other shafting solution and get that and bearings to match.
Another item that I’ve seen rookies struggle with (at least in MN) is their Battery Charger. It sucks to have to invest a decent amount in a charger, but there is a lot of merit in a quad charger. Trickle chargers are not ideal if possible.
I’d skip the band saw and lathe, at least for now. You can get 95% of the bandsaw’s utility from the chop saw and jig saw. The lathe is really seldom used, and you can sometimes substitute a drill press.
Shop tools are, of course, fantastic, but not “required”. We started as a new community team in 2015. We have no school shop to work from, and we meet wherever a sponsor is willing to provide us with space, so all the tools we own are portable. For two years we’ve worked using nothing more than a table saw, a mitre saw, and a drill press, along with your standard assortment of corded power tools like drills, jigsaws, angle grinders.
Would we like a bandsaw, mill, and lathe? Absolutely. Can we work without them for now? Absolutely.
I would definitely recommend a compressor with an air blower, inflator, and a rivet gun to your list.
I also second the battery charger comment. We use a NOCO G4 which is a 4-output slow charger (1.1Ah x4) but we also own a half dozen 6A chargers.
One thing to consider if you’re buying new tools: instead of one giant 400-piece socket set, get multiples of a smaller set. You probably won’t miss that 37/64" socket but you’ll love having multiple ratchet handles and multiple 1/2" sockets when everyone’s building together. Then when you go to competition you can pack just one set for the pit and leave the duplicate sets at home.
Same for allen keys and wrenches - buy just the ones you’ll actually need, and get multiples of them.
For electrical, you will want an Ethernet crimper if you’re going all out. (which it looks like you are) This will allow you to run custom, clean lengths of Ethernet cable and you can make an extremely long one for demo events and practice fields.
Edit: Also, get some nice silicone wire. It doesn’t hold bends like most other wire so it’s easier to route and work with.
This is also handy for when (not if) you’re tethered in the practice field at a competition and your robot runs away from you, ripping the little pin off your RJ45 connector.
This can also damage the RJ45 connector in your roboRio. It is better to use a sacrificial connector such as this panel mount RJ45 extension cable. Alternatively, use a short ethernet cable that is plugged into your roboRio and ziptied securely to some part of your robot frame and use a female-to-female RJ45 to connect to your tether.
For the OP, you will also want to get the proper crimpers for your Anderson Powerpole connectors and the lugs for your 6 AWG cable. You will also need to find the appropriate connectors for your encoder cables. Lastly, what do intend to do with the torch?
