I’ve recently become the person doing our team’s inventory and putting together orders from vendors before kickoff, and I was wondering what products other teams were buying that I might be missing on my lists right now.
So far, I’ve really only been trying to get my hands on things that I think would be urgent to have for prototyping or would go out of stock quickly inseason, as I think more specific items can be ordered once our CAD has finalized them. However, I’m a sophomore and I wasn’t super involved in this kind of stuff in my freshman year season, so… I don’t actually know what’ll go out of stock quick
What are things that teams on CD are ordering before kickoff? Are there any items to keep your eyes on in case stock becomes an issue in season?
I always say buy as many motors and controllers that you can afford. You’ll never be upset that you have too many. But you may get caught out seeing “out of stock” when you go to buy more in January.
The best motors always sell out and are hard to find. Buy what you think you’ll need and a few backups. Motor controllers too
every robot has to drive. So get the parts you need for a driving chassis. Swerve, west coast drive, whatever your choice.
You always need wire, can lines, 12g power, etc.
fasteners. Rivets, screws, bolts. Make sure you have a good selection.
If you have a 3d printer filament
Bumper materials
chain if you use it
special things that might sell out like limelight’s
preorder game pieces
various tubing and hex shaft
bearings
10mm sockets…because of the socket gnomes
Things like intake wheels, sprockets, pulleys, and belts are generally pretty safe to order when you have a design. Although sometimes intake wheels do sell out fast
If you tend to design with planetary gearboxes, the Rev MAXPlanetary gearboxes have gone out of stock during the season, at least the base kits and the 5:1 stages. You may want to consider stocking up on those.
Things to think about right at kickoff rather than before are specialized field element components that you might prefer to buy rather than build in an approximate way. AndyMark usually sells this type of thing. If you want to get in on the first shipment before these sell out and you need to wait for another production run, you will want to be checking their website on kickoff day and making some quick go/no-go decisions about purchasing.
Look at your previous robots to estimate how many motors, motor controllers, bolts, nuts, bearings, COTS gussets, electrical connectors, wires and tubes you are likely to use on a robot. Depending on your budget, and how many robots you build per season ( competition, practice, prototypes) stock up. I’d recommend having 1-2 robots worth more than you expect to use of all more expensive stuff like motors, gearboxes, limelights. For some particularly expensive items like swerve modules we only buy comp bot, practice bot and 2 spares. Basically any component made specifically for FRC might have a great new version or competitor in a year or two so don’t buy a huge stock that will become obsolete. Cheaper and more generic components like nuts, bolts, bearings, and electrical connectors, you can buy several years supply at once so you don’t have to worry about them in season.
Particularly if you have a tight budget and can’t stock for a wide range of potential robot designs, you can often make much better predictions of what you’ll need after kickoff but before CAD. Especially if you have long time technical mentors you can predict whether you’ll need elevator kits, shooter wheels, intake rollers, what types of gearboxes etc. within hours of the game reveal and order those kickoff day.
It’s not realistic to have a full stock of everything, but even having a single piece of a wide variety of some items can be very helpful in prototyping and help you make decisions.
It’s taken a few years to gather, but we now have wheels in a variety of diameters, roller styles, grippyness, and weight. When prototyping a mechanism, being able to compare all of these factors quickly is invaluable, and having a couple of each allows for hotswapping and immediate feedback for variations in your prototype. We might even make an intake that has one type of wheel on one side and another type on the other side, which allows for direct comparison.
Wheels are one example, but there are a variety of other items in the shop that we have gathered to quickly modify prototypes. Random sheets of different materials will allow you to see how game objects interact with them. Also, different types of tape can quickly let you modify a surface (get some CAT Tongue for grippyness, get some Teflon or UHMW to make surfaces slicker).
How does your team plan to prototype? We use the lasercutter, so I’m stocking 1/4" baltic birch plywood. Drills are an easy way to apply torque to a mechanism, so make sure you have a few 1/2" hex drivers for them.
For Ri3D, we tackled this by kind of looking at what we need, and then looking at what we have. The big thing we prioritized was being able to hit the ground running. We can’t find enough gearboxes? Be ready with chain or belts and something like recalc to verify math. Not sure what mechanisms we’ll use? have different wheel diameters and types, gussets, fasteners, and shaft lengths ready for a drill. Especially for the beginning, proof of concept is very valuable even before you buy those nicer parts for the final robot.
