I notice last year at Worlds that some teams use long screws, and then cut them after they put them on the robot. This doesn’t make sense to me because from what I’ve found, the long the screw the more expensive. Perhaps someone can enlighten me.
Those teams may have been cutting screws because usually when screws are cut, the threads near the cut get roughed up making it harder for nuts to slip off. It seems like a waste to me especially because the nylock nuts are pretty good, but I can see why it would be done.
A good waste of money too.
Most of the time it happens because of sizing…when you’re just hoping to finally get your robot registered, and a screw sticks out an eighth of an inch outside the sizing box, just taking a dremel and cutting it off in a second sounds much better than taking the time to take things apart just to replace a screw.
and usually teams buy their screws at local hardware stores at a fraction of the cost (and better material quality as well)
Mcmaster-carr is a good place to buy hardware. They have very fast shipping, too.
I have used cut screws before. Personally, I used it because I could get a perfect size screw, without using any space that I didn’t need to actually use. For example, the way I put together my 8 bar, the screw I was using would have been too long and got in the way of my intake plate going up. Instead of redoing the whole arm, I just cut the screw so that it wouldn’t hit.