Hey guys,
So I’ve been thinking about the team’s parts just in case if they break (we’ve had numerous stripped gears) and was wondering how many of each part you guys take to competitions, and how many you keep on hand at your home base.
To keep things organised, I’ve been thinking of creating a list stating how many to have on hand both in shop, and on the road for the robot and when to order a part according to how many we have in stock.
We usually bring a small handful of aluminum and steel, a huge tray of screws, nuts, locking collars etc… Aside from that we usually keep enough wheels, gears, motors, and sensors to build another robot. Last year we only had 1 cracked gear, but this year we stripped several gears trying to track down a phantom source of friction which turned out to be a weak motor causing asymmetrical forces. We will be keeping plenty of gears on hand this year. I think each team will have different ideas on what to keep on hand due to their anticipated needs.
We bring double the tank tread we need, as well as all of the axles, motors, gears and sprockets. We always bring an extra Cortex, an extra power expander, all of our 2-wire and 3-wire extension cables, all of the Motor Controller 29’s, and all of the handheld tools we have in the shop (hacksaw, file, etc.).
As for metal, we bring as much as we can fit into two boxes. One is steel, one is aluminum. It normally ends up being just about everything. We also bring an extra set of Mecanum wheels, and an extra 6 Omnis.
So, basically we pack up the entire shop for every competition. Sorry that doesn’t really help, but on the plus side I think that’s what most teams do. So, if you forget something, just ask.
For our early local competitions we bring most of our metal. It is sorted in plastic bins that can stack nice so it does not take much space. We also have a travel box of screws, axels, bearings, small gears etc. that we keep stocked all of the time. Our tool chest has wheels so that is easy to bring as well. Sometimes at very early local competitions out teams have been known to completly rebuild a robot when they find it does not compete well. At latter competitions we bring less metal because we are not rebuilding robots there. This year when we went to worlds we traveled very light: we took only about 10 pieces of aluminum, a small bag of each kind of small part (bearings, serews), lots of axels, and a minimal amount of tools.
Also we bring all of our electronics to every competition in case a cortex would stop working, of more common occurance of a motor breaking.