I’m going to a VEX coaches kick-off meeting tonight. I think I’ll be given a robot kit for the team. If I have the chance to add some extra parts from the school’s parts stock, what should make sure I grab if they have it?
I think a lot of kits come with keps nuts (aka star nuts) for assembly. These are fine for prototyping but they loosen fairly easily. So I’d suggest getting some of the nylock nuts to hold things together better.
Grab some extra screws and aluminum C-channel, if you can.
If your kit has no sensors, try to get a pot and/or encoder to experiment with.
Enjoy! 
More motors.
Pneumatics.
Motor controllers, extension cables, and any long pieces of metal you can
Probably too late for your meeting, but just in case…
More shaft collars, C-channel of any kind (steel or aluminum, narrow or wide),
high-strength gears of all sizes, esp. very large (84-tooth) and very small (12-tooth, metal).
I’d recommend high-strength shafts (axles), but they’re a newer product and not very abundant.
Only our varsity team can use those and they are very complex sometimes for new people.
This seems to be against the spirit of the question. This team has a starter kit which contains like 5 motors and some short steel parts.
Everyone else gave real advice for things to try to get easily and that are more or less necessary.
A piston kit is 200$. That is probably more than everything else we have suggested combined. And if the choice was between making a 5 motor robot with 2 pistons or a 10 motor robot the answer is without a doubt to have a 10 motor robot.
Sorry fonts are not cooperating. Anyone know how to make fixed width fonts work on this site?
These are the top parts ordered by our 23 teams in the fall through new years. We had plenty of parts already but this should give you an idea
Top items for this year’s game may not correlate to next year’s game. For instance the claw kit or the extensive use of 35 hole aluminum c-channels. I can’t remember the last game that the claw kit was a popular item.
In our club there are essentially 3 robots completely net new and the rest started with last years robots. So divide the units by 23 to see number per robot to add on. On the linked report, items with 0 ordered are either in our stash, not ordered, ordered elsewhere, or not allocated per team (Cortex, battery, etc).
Vexmen parts order summary by part Fall 2014
[FONT=“Palatino Linotype”]Part Sum of Number of packs needed Sum of Unit total
276-2177 2 wire motor 393 67 $1,024.33
276-2906 C-Channel 1x2x1x35(2 pack) 66 $593.34
276-1209 Bearing Flat (10-pack) 44 $219.56
276-1668 2-Wire Motor 393 w/ Motor Controller 29 41 $1,024.18
276-2010 Shaft Collar (16-pack) 35 $279.65
276-2289 Aluminum C-Channel 1x2x1x35 (6-pack) 27 $914.74
276-1149 Drive Shaft 12" (4-pack) 24 $215.04
276-2250 High Strength Gear Kit 23 $689.77
276-1926 Linear motion kit 22 $549.78
276-2185 4"omni directionalwheel (2 pack) 13 $319.81
276-1430 2-Wire Extension Cable 36" (4 Pack) 13 $103.87
276-2193 Motor Controller 29 13 $129.87
275-1139 C-Channel 1x5x1x35 (4-pack) 13 $259.87
276-3521 High Strength Shaft Bearing (10-Pack) 13 $103.87
276-3438 High Strength 84-Tooth Gear (4-Pack) 12 $172.88
276-2212 Claw Kit 12 $239.88
275-1066 Nylon Spacer Variety Pack 12 $59.40
275-1025 Washer, Teflon (25-pack) 11 $54.45
275-1020 Standoff 3.00" (4-pack) 11 $48.65
275-1065 Drive Shaft Bar Lock (8-pack) 10 $64.50
276-2288 Aluminum C-Channel 1x2x1x25 (6-pack) 10 $319.90
276-2575 C-Channel Coupler Gusset (8-pack) 9 $179.91
276-2016 Pillow Block Bearing & Lock Bar Pack 9 $71.91
276-2011 Drive Shaft 2" and 3" Pack 9 $56.35
275-1138 C-Channel 1x5x1x25 (4-pack) 9 $145.89
275-1018 Standoff 2.00" (10-pack) 9 $55.65[/FONT]
Sorry about the pneumatics. I should have read more closely into the question . Meanwhile, your meeting is probably over, but things that are often useful on robots are rubberbands and zipties, which are available at a ton of places.