A community discussion about 3D printing, 2 years after the previous community discussion

VEX V5 General Discussion
22

To what?

23

If you don’t have a cnc machine or a 3D printer just go to a machine shop nearby and have them make the part for you. It’s pretty inexpensive tbh, especially compared to how pricy everything else in vex is

24

Because 99% of VEX teams aren’t on the level of being ready to use machining tools. You might be. I might be. Most of this forum might be. But the vast majority of VEX teams wouldn’t even take advantage of a CNC if they had one.

25

There are a severe lack of these in biking distance.

The one at the mall down the road (that also sold VEX parts) closed last year.

26

Ask your parents to drive you. I don’t drive yet so that’s what I do lol

27

But at that rate what’s wrong with being able to offer the option to expand what students want to get into? VEX isn’t just about building robots based on a set material library. Allowing custom CNC’d Lexan pieces helps break that mentality up.

28

Exactly, the point is teaching students these new and exciting engineering tools

29

There isn’t one in a distance to where driving there wouldn’t exceed my machining budget

30

Then make one. There are tons of resources and tutorials online available

31

Or just order a cheap one off amazon

32

Because it leaves behind the parts of the VEX community that simply don’t have the money and resources to match with what well-funded, high-level teams can do.

33

And the parts for a CNC cost less than a CNC itself?

For less than 15 bucks?

34

Dude it really not that cost prohibitive. Admission to worlds is a higher price than a low budget CNC machine

35

Is something I straight up can’t afford, by like a factor of 10

36

Just because high-level teams do it doesn’t mean its massively game-breaking or a requirement? I’ve been in that exact same situation where I didn’t have access to large scale cutting and modeling, but in the end, I was still able to adapt to what high-level teams were doing based on the materials that are already provided from VEX’s parts. Considering Lexan CNC capability as a requirement is honestly the wrong mentality here. It should be considered more like a creature comfort than a requirement.

37

If you are already a competitive team, then you are spending money for parts, control system, and competitions. If you already have the money to fund a competitive team, then surely you have enough money for a cheap cnc.

39

Yes I can. You can probably email these locations for sponsorship to even get CNC’ing for free:

Screenshot (1023)
Screenshot (1023)2528×1330 1.22 MB

Also, did you ask the following Arizona schools if you can use their CNC’s for educational purposes?
East Valley Institute of Technology
Arizona Precision Manufacturing
Universal Technical Institute

As I said, if you have enough motivation, you can get anything you need for little-to-no-cost.
Same applies to 3D printing.

40

I’m saying I don’t, unless my teammate from last year can continue for this year, I will be stuck with very few, very old, steel parts, and like 1 tournament.

41

@Sylvie if this is something you care about you’ve gotta make decisions that advance you towards your goal. 3 packs of 6 aluminum C channels is about the same price as a DIY cnc machine lol

42

I didn’t wanna have to do this but y’all are clearly not getting the hint(s). Stop bugging him about what he has access to. If he can’t get to it then that’s that. If you consider those distances or price tags to be standard then consider yourself (very) lucky.