Last Anvil 2024 - Product Release & Shop Opening

Introduction - Last Anvil Innovations LLC (www.lastanvil.com):

Greetings, Innovators!

Last Anvil Innovations is thrilled to extend a warm welcome to the FIRST Community! We are honored to introduce ourselves and share the passion that fuels our endeavor.

Last Anvil was born out of a shared love for entrepreneurism, STEM, and the exhilarating world of the FIRST Robotics Competition, having founders who are FIRST alumni and mentors.

Mission:

Our mission is to create a company that provides consistent, equitable access to cutting-edge technological products and services.

Whether you’re a rookie team or a seasoned group of FIRST veterans, Last Anvil is here to provide you with attainable high-quality products and services that enhance your robot.

We look forward to helping you construct your robots to complete the 2024 challenge, joining you on this incredible journey, and hearing your feedback on how we can improve our services and product line to best meet your teams’ needs.

Products:

Our 2024 product line includes:

Notably, for this season, we chose to limit our offerings, so we could learn more and adapt to the community’s preferences.

Sponsorship:

As FIRST alumni, we understand the critical nature of community involvement, as such, we hope to provide product testing and team sponsorship opportunities in the near future. We encourage you to sign up for our newsletter, so you know when these applications launch!

Conclusion:

Here’s to a future filled with innovation and collaboration!

Best Regards,

Last Anvil Innovations – Harvey, Ben, Chris, and Patrick

Follow Us:

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39 Likes

These all look great, how have the tolerances looked on the endcaps with the tubing options that are out there right now?

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It was our intention to design the end caps around the market and the types of tubes frequently used by teams, allowing team’s to buy tubes from anywhere and still have access to our end caps.

The tolerance is ±0.005 in. They should work with available tubes on the market for each respective thickness. In the case of WCP’s .09375 tubing, you could use our 0.0625 end cap and 3d print a sleeve.

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Looks like great stuff! Looking forward to ordering for my team!

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Would love to see a left hand thread version of the Round End Cap! May not need this year with small robots but would make it easy to make strong cross bracing turnbuckles.

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Great idea! It was not something we had considered previously, so the feedback is immensely appreciated. We will definitely look into it, as we begin expanding our offerings. It also prompted a few other ideas from our engineers around the creation of potential adapters.

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Update (1/11): Shipping our patterned tube took longer than initially estimated. However, they are expected to arrive in-house this weekend, and they will be available for sale early next week, assuming they pass our quality inspection.

We hope the design process and prototyping is treating everyone well!

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Update: (1/17): Finally, after severe winter weather delayed our shipment, the patterned tubes have arrived, and we are processing and inspecting them to ensure they are ready for sale. We hope to make them available to teams tomorrow or Friday.

Update (1/18): Sadly, upon inspection, we learned that our manufacturer had not properly deburred the patterned tubes. At the moment, we do not believe they meet our standard of quality. Therefore, we are putting them through additional processing to attempt to correct the error and make them available to teams in our preferred state. This will unfortunately take some time, but we will keep you updated, as we have.

In the meantime, we greatly appreciate your patience and have decided to run a 15% midseason discount on all other items in our shop until the tubes are available for sale. It may be used more than once.

To utilize the 15% discount, please enter the code at checkout: #DEBURR2024

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Update (1/20): After additional processing, we have been able to deburr the ends of some of our patterned tubes, putting them into a sellable state.

Unfortunately, given our tooling capabilities at the moment, we are unable to remove debris from the inside. It should not be too difficult for teams to clean them. However, we want to make you aware of this problem before purchasing. A note has been placed on the product page as well.

Given this error, the added inconvenience, and the quality below our preferred standard, we are leaving the 15% discount in place on all items. (#DEBURR2024)

To purchase the patterned tube, you can find them here.

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Update (1/21): To give teams an idea of how our tubes look, I’ve attached a few pictures.

Please note that upon arrival there may be some shaving dust and the ends of the tubes may deviate in appearance. With that being said, they will all fit with end caps.

See Photos Below:




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Out of curiosity, are your HTD pulleys machined as a single piece or with snap-on flanges?

One of the issues we’ve had over the years with the VexPro HTD Pulleys is that you can pop the flanges off accidentally and they almost never go back together the right way again.

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Great question, I will touch base with our team to confirm and get back to you ASAP.

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After speaking to our team, the pulleys are machined with snap-on flanges, like Vex and WCP.

However, you raise an important issue with the current pulley design.

We are going to look into redesigning them, so they can be machined as a single piece for teams. This may make them slightly thicker. We will keep teams apprised of this change should it occur!

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Neat! Always cool to see a manufacturer this responsive to feedback. :smiley:

Incidentally, if you guys are ever interested in adding a few more SKUs, might I also suggest:

  • 1"x2" Tubing with hole patterns only on the 1" edges. We always have trouble finding this stuff in stock elsewhere, so another option would be nice (personally I’d prefer it with smaller holes too, like what Vex has/had, since I like tapping it for 10-32 screws instead of just clearancing it, but it is what it is).

  • GT2 Hex Pulleys. These seem to just not exist outside of FIRST vendors (even without the hex), at least in the correct widths or at a reasonable price, so when VEX/WCP runs out, there’s not much in the way of alternative sources. Plus many of these have the same issue as the HTD pulleys where the flanges can snap off.

Just a thought. :wink:

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Of course! It’s our pleasure.

We intentionally limited our SKUs to stay lean, learn, and tailor our products to the community’s needs, so we immensely appreciate the feedback and thoughts.

If you have any other thoughts, please do not hesitate to let us know. :slight_smile:

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Inventory Update (01/24): Hi everyone, we wanted to inform you that we only have 5 patterned tubes left for the 2 x 1 x 0.125.

If you are in need of this product, we highly encourage you to purchase as soon as possible to ensure they are available.

All of our other variants are still in good stock!

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Update 01/24: Since we did not show case our products at launch, we have decided to roll out product pictures over the next couple of days to better inform teams. For today, we are pleased to present images of our Pulleys (18T, 24T, 30T, and 36T) below.




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Update 01/25: For our next product rollout, we are pleased to present images of our End Caps below, which have a tolerance of ±0.005 in and fit the types of tubes frequently used in FRC. Teams can buy tubes from anywhere and still use our end caps.


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Update 1/26: As an update to our shipping policy, we have decided to only use UPS as a carrier at the moment.

For some reason, USPS is not processing and scanning dropped-off packages promptly, leading to highly variable delivery times. We do not feel this aligns with our goal of providing teams with a transparent, reliable, and quality experience.

We will notify teams of any updates regarding this matter.

Edit 1/28: We resumed USPS on small orders under $20 to keep shipping costs economical for teams.

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