Tightening our belts

Dearest Builders,

We have some big decisions and a tight budget this year. I *really* want you to be able to justify parts that you might want to buy but not necessarily need - you guessed it - I 'm talking about the chassis wheels. In my opinion (and that's just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt), these are wants, whereas things like, uh, the launcher wheels are NEEDS.

I apologize that I drummed up so much excitement about the traction wheels but at that point, there were a few pieces of information that I did not know, including what we had in the bank.

Chrissy and Kersten, the 6" wheels will cost quite a bit more than $30.00

Here's the site: http://www.ifirobotics.com/robot-traction-wheels.shtml

Base 6" outer diameter wheel: $49.95
Tread: $3.95
Wheel Sprocket: $12.00

That comes out to approximately $66.00 per wheel.
And a total of 6 X $66 for the entire chassis: $396

(And yes, we'd return the sprockets that Jon ordered on Monday for the current wheels)

We need to think and reflect on this if we were to spend $400 on the wheels alone. I mentioned to Sophia, that given our current financials, we should work as frugally as we can. This ties in with the Portland trip and how much of that we can fund.

I would very much like to build this robot for about $750 and we can, given what I know today about the money we have.

Let's talk later.

Em