Ok, I’ve been contacted by a couple of teams who are having trouble with making their priority lists. If your team has one made then post it. I’m posting 900’s current list below (it might get revised).
12V Battery NP18-12
Talon SRX
Victor SP
Power Distribution Panel
Voltage Regulator Module
AndyMark 9015 Motor
Lead Screw w/ Nut
Encoder Kit AMT103-V
1/2" Jaw Coupling Hub
3/8" Jaw Coupling Hub
Jaw Coupling Spider
1/4" Jaw Coupling Hub
Modulus Kit (4 cells + 4 mounts)
Motor and Harness
Pneumatic Control Module
Air Volume Tank, 32 cu. in., Black Plastic AVT-PP-35
PG71 Gearmotor
PG71 Gearmotor With Encoder
2-Position & 4-Position Link Connectors, Qty 10 each with 6ft Cable
Tape Measure,12 ft. L x1/2 In W,Hi-Viz
3/8" Oldham Coupling Hub
1/2" Oldham Coupling Hub
Oldham Coupling Disk
1/4" Oldham Coupling Hub
1/4" x 1/4" Beam Coupling
3/8" x 3/8" Beam Coupling
Crimping Tool Y1MRTC
4 inch Stealth Wheel, 500 Hex Bore
DryLin® W, linear guide system, guide carriage, assembled
The priority list is how a team selects what parts they would like among the available items in FIRST Choice. It’s not guaranteed that a team will receive an item on their priority list but the lists allow teams to prioritize the items they would like to receive based on the quantity available and that teams want of that item. Helpful blog post from FIRST over here: http://archive.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/blog-Get-Ready-to-Make-FIRST-Choices
This isn’t really what OP asked for, but I’ve attached an excel sheet of some information I skimmed from running a python file I sloppily threw together (which is zipped up so I could upload it too). I put a recommended search term column together for googling to try to get a cost estimate that’s just the supplier + part number.
Definitely not perfect, but hopefully useful to someone. And maybe someone that has more time than I do right now can modify my script to get a cost for parts that it’s feasible (andymark) and generate a $/credit column too…
I haven’t put together a list yet, but my team in Canada is wary of shipping charges that will erode the “value” of each credit, e.g. if we ask for batteries at 50 credits vs a Victor 888 at 50 credits, we’ll pay more in international shipping charges for the battery and thus those 50 credits don’t quite go as far. We could always buy a battery from Amazon (assuming the OEM specification rule for batteries is still in play this year).
We’re not just an international team but a rookie team (with veteran students, thus the low team number) so we have basically no inventory and no money.
So our list will be:
items we think we will need for inventory and prototyping (pneumatics, motors, controllers)
that aren’t too heavy or bulky to ship (e.g. batteries, steel track)
that couldn’t be more easily/cheaply purchased or donated locally (e.g. tool sets)
Here’s our list, in priority order. Our resources are decent; we also are placing about $3k in orders with various vendors pre-season with things we’re pretty sure we’ll want to have; this is for things we’re likely to want, but not quite certain.
Qty Product(s)
2 PG71 Gearmotor With Encoder (fc16-005)
2 Encoder Kit AMT103-V (fc16-029)
2 Green Ring Light (fc16-099)
4 Air Volume Tank, 32 cu. in., Black Plastic AVT-PP-35 (fc16-021)
1 Compressor, Model 90C (fc16-102)
1 Talon SRX (fc16-064)
1 12V Battery NP18-12 (fc16-036)
6 Lead Screw w/ Nut (fc16-052)
2 1/2" Hex Shaft Collar - CL-8HX-A (fc16-084)
6 1/4" x 1/4" Rigid Coupling - CLX-4-4-A (fc16-085)
6 1/4" Shaft Collar - SP-4-A (fc16-075)
6 1/2" Shaft Collar - ENSP25-8-A (fc16-083)
6 3/8" Shaft Collar - SP-6-A (fc16-077)
6 3/8" x 3/8" Rigid Coupling - CLX-6-6-A (fc16-086)
2 Battery Connector from Anderson Power Products (fc16-008)
2 iglide® PRT slewing ring (fc16-056)
2 iglide plastic flange bearing (fc16-106)
2 iglide plastic sleeve bearing (fc16-107)
2 iglide plastic thrust washer (fc16-108)
2 iglide plastic clip bearing (fc16-109)
The “buy now list” includes two AM-14U2s (we build a practice 'bot), some Versaframe and other Vex products (first year for these), another control system, and the various wires and connectors that we are short on. We’ll also have a budget of at least $2K (more if/as sponsors come in) to buy stuff after kickoff. If we get enough money early enough, we’ll replenish the depleted portions of our pneumatics parts/supplies before kickoff as well.
Wow our first choice list looks identical and so does our buy now list.
Except we opted to buy 2 versachassis sets instead of kit chassis. Also we plan on assembling some parts of the practice robot drive train pre-season. That is legal right?
As long and what you build does not go onto your final robot you should be just fine. The scope of the previous years’ rules apply only to the competition robot.
Our concept is to keep the AM-14U2’s in the boxes until we decide what we’re going to build, at least as far as overall dimensions, gear ratios, and wheel diameters are concerned. We are not disassembling our “COTS” gearboxes before build season, but if we decide that we will use one of them, we shall disassemble it back to COTS equivalency and reassemble it before including on the robot. This is actually a lesson we learned in and after Katrina, if in a somewhat different form; read the following paragraphs if you want the rather gory details.
Whew. Some people lost everything; came home to a slab. Some came home to something that still looked like home but was not worth rebuilding; some of them considered the “slabbers” to be lucky. Some came home to something that was worth rebuilding, even if we needed to make some decisions about refrigerators and freezers that had severely rotted food in them. I fall squarely into the last category; I needed a new roof, had about $1,000 of structural damage where a neighbor’s water oak fell on the house, and all my food was beyond saving, but the house itself was well worth saving (I specifically selected a relatively high 19 foot elevation after having been flooded out back in 1995; Slidell’s highest cross on the topo maps is 21 feet; Katrina flooding in Slidell came to just above the 10 foot contour). Mom and I cleared all of the food out of the freezer and refrigerator, and hoped that we could get the smells out sufficiently to justify saving it. I’m using my pre-K refrigerator-freezer to this day.
Katrina was followed quickly by Rita, (which made landfall a bit to our west, in my father’s family’s stomping grounds) but there had been very little rebuilding by that point. The next hurricane as far as I am concerned was Gustav, in 2006. (Yes, it’s very similar to my full given name of Gustave, but so what; it didn’t matter.) There were a significant number of people who suggested that, in getting ready for Gustav, we should place all of our refrigerated and frozen goods in the landfill before landfall. Seriously, they suggested that.
I came up with what I still consider to be a great combination of preparedness and compromise. Prior to the storm, I took everything out of the freezer, stuck it in a couple of garbage bags, tied the bags tightly shut, then put the bags back into the freezer. I did the same with the condiments and other “longer-life” items in the refrigerator. When the power outage proved to be about 2 hours, all I did was unpack the bags; I was out about $20 and 6 hours of work. If the outage had been measured in days, I could have simply pulled the bags and put them on the curb for pickup, with minimal proximity to the stink. Win-win, even in loss. The bottom line is that you need to plan and hope and be ready to take advantage of the best possibilities, while having a contingency plan that will see you through the worst.
