Our team is planning restocking most of our supplies this offseason. So I was wondering, what should we get? How much should we get? Just general questions like that. Also feel free to ask for suggestions for your own teams restock, and maybe someone will be able to help.
EDIT:
I should clarify that we are a pretty new team. We had an old team at our school that lasted from 2012-15, so a lot of our things are from them.
A better question is what is in stock so you can get it. 
What are the items you typically run short on? Think of the “consumables”. Primarily we find ourselves pre-purchasing sheet and tube aluminum, hex and round shaft, rivets, wheel treads and so on. Once a design progresses we find ourselves ordering unique items such as new sizes of gears, pulleys, and belts we’ve decided we need. Currently we’ve embarked on upgrading our electrics (RoboRio, PDH, etc). In past years, we’ve done things like motor upgrades (eg we have tons of perfectly functional CIMs we no longer use).
If you plan on using the REV 2x1, i would wait until they release the new version. What they have now has the groove cut down the center line of the 1" side that really weakens it. We had problems along with many other teams this past year. Greg announced that they were redesigning it without the groove. The rest of the REV stuff is great.
Check on all of your wiring supplies. You should have all the gauges you might need in both colors. Also check on your connector inventory. If you are using power poles, they make a tool that allows you to reuse housings, but make sure you have plenty of contacts. Also make sure you have stuff to connect batteries, and if you can budget them, get new batteries also.
In conjunction to everyone elses answers, I would stock up on:
Whatever nut / bolt combination your team uses during the season. Ours is a 1/4-#20 bolt and nut combination. We have Milwaukee pack outs with our nuts, bolts, and washers.
Uncut hex rod
Square tubing
Wiring supplies. gauge wire, crimpers, Anderson connectors, etc.
Gears, gears and more gears.
Bearings - Hex and Circular.
Chain - #25 or #35, masterlinks and half links.
I’m sure I am missing some.
Do you have any recommendations on where to get gears?
Some things I haven’t seen mentioned yet:
If you’re looking for gears AndyMark has a wide selection of standard FRC gears available (West Coast Products has also been pretty good for my team). Seeing as most COTS things run on 1/2 or 3/8 hex those are likely the best ones to buy and they have plenty of options (just go to the gears page and select 20DP gears, 20DP is basically the FRC standard). They also sell pinion kits for all the common FRC legal motors (CIM, 775, NEOs etc.) if you’re short on those for your gearboxes.
I’d also buy a set of drivetrain gearboxes as well that way you aren’t worried about finding a set for next season, faster chassis means more time to mess around with prototypes. My team has been buying West Coast Products gearboxes for a long time now and we’ve been happy with them, but if you’re low on money AndyMark’s are more than good enough as well.
Plenty of 20DP 1/2" hex bore gears at Rev Robotics as well. Rev also has gears with their own MAXspline bore.
For low-load applications, 3D printed gears can often work.
Do you have any recommendations for gear sizes? We probably don’t have the budget do get a bunch of each size.
All good ideas. Only a few to add. We stock an estimated season’s worth of 1x1 and 1x2 aluminum tube. Last year’s left overs are for prototyping and pre season experiments. With a bit of lead time we might CNC our own pilot holes this year. Have to check The Rules on this. We stocked up on wire last year. Too bad, recently we went to the local electronics recycling/refurbishing facility…
I’d recommend standard 9t pinions that can mount on your motor (being a small team I’m assuming you’re using CIMs so getting ones that fit on 8mm keyed shafts is what you’re looking for) (West Coast Products is actually the place for these, AndyMark doesn’t carry pinions in this small of a size, their smallest appears to be 12t which will still work, WCP also seems to be cheaper!). And whatever gears you use for your drive train, spares for those are always nice to have around (whatever sizes these are/were either WCP or AM are good places for these).
For general purpose, getting a few 24, 32, and 48t is probably the best (with the 9t pinion it’s about a 3, 4, and 5 to 1 ratios respectively, with the 12t from AM they make 2, ~3, and 4 to 1 reductions), works for many low weight mechanisms if you’re going direct from motor to mechanism and don’t want to mess with (or don’t have the money) to buy planetary gearboxes. I’d leave buying other sizes for in-season custom design cases (I don’t think i’ve personally used something like a 42t gear just randomly).
If you do want to buy planetaries for ease of design and assembly, I cannot recommend REV MAXPlanetary gearboxes enough, mounts on all COTS motors. They aren’t cheap by any means, so don’t buy them if your team can’t.
Edit: something i forgot to mention. Other than pinons, as far as I’m aware, all of AndyMark’s gears are steel, WCP gives you the option of aluminum or steel gears. If you’re not worried about weight, grab the steel gears for near bomb-proof durability. Or grab the aluminum because they’re lighter and still have pretty bulletproof durability as well. Pinions you don’t get a choice, they’re always steel.
Pocketed steel gears reduce the weight penalty substantially compared to full-width aluminum gears. For example, a 20DP 40T is about 0.018 lb for pocketed steel and 0.012 lb for 7075 full-width aluminum. You can also get pocketed aluminum gears if you are really trying to save weight. If you aren’t right at the weight limit trying to save every ounce, the durability of pocketed steel makes it a great option.
Ive seen a few people suggest restocking on wires, which is definitely something that we need. I was wondering what are some standard sizes that we should get?
12 AWG, 14 AWG, and 18 AWG red/black zip cord are all pretty common wire sizes (driven by the manual rules for 40A/30A/20A breakers respectively). I’ve had good experience buying spools (e.g. 50’-100’) from PowerWerx. For PWM signal wire and tools, I recommend Hansen Hobbies. Hansen Hobbies also sells Molex SL connectors, which they market as 0.100" Latching Polarized connectors.
Copper wire only. Stranded (not solid) highly recommended.
Red & Black for each of these:
4 or 6 awg for batteries/main breaker/PDH
12awg for 40 amp breakers (eg motors)
14awg for 30 amp breakers (eg smaller motors)
16 or 18awg for 20 amp breakers
22awg for sensors
22awg Green & Yellow twisted pair for CAN bus
Another vote for PowerWerx here. Have been buying from them for 2 seasons now. Great product and reasonable prices IMO.
Only thing I’ll note for international teams, they ship via USPS which takes too long (at least to Canada) to arrive during build season. Last seasons order took a month to arrive, and the year before that about 3 weeks. Because of this, we place a single order around October for the coming season with all the wire we think we’ll need.
This year that order will likely comprise of 100ft of 12ga, 100ft of 14ga and 50ft of 18ga (possibly more once we do inventory in September).
I suggest silicone insulated 12-18awg wire and EPDM for battery cables. It costs a bit more but is so much nicer
