A lot of times ‘recommended startup kits and parts’ are great, but often you’ll want more of certain parts or parts not in the recommended list.
What is the ‘community’s view’ of a proper starting parts and tools for an FTC team?
I just want to double check that you’re asking for FTC and not FRC information. If it’s FRC, I’ve got thoughts. If it’s FTC, I’ll keep my mouth shut!
1 Like
Yeah, it’s FTC. I haven’t been involved in FTC before so I don’t know what the real parts need is.
GoBilda is pretty much the defacto build platform for FTC.
The strafer kit is pretty useful year to year.
With REV, the ultraplanetries give you the ability to test different gear ratios pretty easily.
For FTC, you’ll probably get a better response from the FTC Discord.
GM0 is a pretty good resource
1 Like
I started an FTC team in 2015 which has grown to three teams. There’s a difference between just what you need and what you really ought to have, so I think I’ll go with what we’ve got now:
- Storage space
- Meeting space for building
- Meeting space for practice
- Field tiles and walls
- Storage bags for the tiles and walls
- Game elements
- Parts organizers (we have divided cup organizers, divided wall organizers, and various small boxes and small milk crates)
- Shelves
- A cart for your robot, drive station, toolbox
- Toolbox (for us, we originally had an art bin, and now have a (very) small harbor freight toolbox to fit in our robot cart, but you really only a few tools at competition)
- Spare gamepads (we’ve had a bunch seemingly die this year)
- Have a good supply of structure, brackets, a couple hundred more fasteners than you think you need
- Also a fair amount of gears, sprockets, chain
- Buy at least a few things that you might need or want but might not need this year, it’s helpful to have things on hand to prototype with (like various wheels, polycord, etc)
- Various prototyping materials like wood and plastic and cardboard
- Zip ties (like fasteners, have a bunch)
- Pens, pencils, paper
- Notebooks and binders
- Allen wrenches, wrenches, nut drivers, pliers, zip tie cutters, tape measure
- Label maker
- A spare battery and charger
- Good to have access to a drill, saw, bandsaw, etc
- Programming laptop
Things we maybe have too much of:
- Some shorter lengths of sensor wires
- 90 degree gussets, but maybe that just means we actually have enough
As to which brands, we originally had Tetrix since that was the starter kit available on the FIRST storefront, and then we invested heavily into REV when they came out because the hex shafts are much better than Tetrix and their D shafts (and overuse of set screws). But we still keep the Tetrix stuff around because the structural bits can be useful, and we’ve used the old style motors as dead weight.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.