jamius.com

Hey guys, I know that many of the threads on here inspire us to do the projects ourself, so let's share where we get our materials cheap.

I the only place I know is for electronics. I know Jaimie buys his stuff generally in surplus, but where the heck does he find it?

Anyway, I generally buy my electronics from digikey.com . You can buy in bulk, and you get discounts for the more you buy. It's probably not the cheapest, but it's MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper than radioshack. Oh, but you have to know EXACTLY what you're looking for, cause there's a MILLION different products you can buy.

I really want to know where to find maybe bulk or surplus solar panels, that'd be AWESOME!

hobbyking.com has a lot of awesome stuff, but it tends to get shipped from overseas so the shipping can be expensive.

dew wrote:hobbyking.com has a lot of awesome stuff, but it tends to get shipped from overseas so the shipping can be expensive.

If I remember correctly, they also have kinda completed stuff. Like motor drivers and bluetooth modules. (Of course motor drivers are pretty easy to build.) And buying one when you can build (or salvage) one disagree's with the Jaimie Mentality!

if your in the UK: http://www.technobotsonline.com/

Has great products for robotics and other modeling applications, pretty cheap too, plus i have a FRA (fighting robot association) members 25% discount. which is nice!

also i use this site for pre modified servo's and other stuff, it even has a antweight kit: http://www.robotwars101.org/ants/shop/
Jack

I was looking up surplus solar panels, and found this site.

http://www.surplusshed.com/

Anybody ever used it? They have nice 12 - 20 V 6x12in panels for 6 bucks! A bunch of them will be great to power my battery charger!

Just wanted to know if anybody has used the site.

UK or US, It would be good to decipher where ppl are when posting so we know if it is useful individuals. It aint on everyones posts.

Ta.

D.

I like the idea of keeping them cheap for a different reason. The biggest selling point for Jaimie's Spider Tank will be the price. You can find videos on youTube of mechanical spiders that walk very well. There are lots of them done with electronics and are certainly more programmable, but the biggest difference is that you could probably buy dozen's of Spider Tanks for the cost of one of those robots and if you are talking something for a kid, you want it cheap enough that parents will buy it for them. There is another huge benefit to Jaimie's design. These days electronics aren't really designed to be repaired. You just open another landfill and toss them when they fail. The Spider Tank looks like something a lot of people could repair and something that wouldn't be so bad in a landfill if they couldn't. It is a very smart design. More complex is not always better. Cheaper is great.

Here's some spots I like to check out from time to time for the stuff I'm into:

Good Surplus:
http://www.surpluscenter.com
http://www.goldmine-elec.com (good deals on Photovoltaics, from bits to panels)
http://allelectronics.com
http://www.jameco.com

Retail Standbys:
http://www.mcmaster.com
http://www.vxb.com
http://www.mouser.com
http://www.digikey.com
http://www.pololu.com

Unique Stuff:
http://www.kitebuilder.com
https://sdp-si.com

I think it's a good idea.. Cheaper but beautifully done! Not impossible, let's just bring the best of our creativity!

Damn, you guys are all fancypants. *Buying* parts? HA.

http://freecycle.org <-- Good place to get things, usually whoever claims first or can pick up first is given dibs. If you ask for broken stuff, you'll get lots.

Other than that, tell your friends you make things, and make sure they give you all their scrapable garbage. Even if you have no use for anything, get in the habit of doing a complete teardown on anything before you'd throw it out, at least you'll build a mental inventory of where you could find things. Haul things out of the alleys on garbage day, check the dump, try to set up arrangements with thrift stores in your area for all their broken electronic donations once a week or whenever they'd bin them, (that otherwise cost them money to haul away, some might even deliver for you). Appliance and motor repair shops may be helpful. Call up each of the schools in your area and ask if they have obsolete or broken electronics they're getting rid of soon, and if you can have them instead. Sometimes they auction them (where they then end up at scrappers), but sometimes they don't and just junk them. Police lost/seized property divisions often junk massive amounts of things, for example, for every 30,000 people a city has, the police round up about 1 abandoned bicycle a day. That doesn't sound like much, until you note that a city of a million hauls in about 1,000 bikes a month, that are unclaimed and thrown to the dump, or at minimum sold for scrap. If you have scrap you can't use, head to the scrap yard and see if they'll let you pick over recent arrivals and trade it. Some'll let you trade at par, as long as you stay out of their way. Scrap steal is basically not worth your gas money, but copper is $5/pound, alum is $1/pound, transformer or motor iron goes for $0.30/pound if stripped, or half those amounts if you don't take stuff apart. Scrap materials are easy to find. If you need scrap bits of wood for smaller projects, construction sites have bins full (under 4' is considered scrap to a framer), and Big Home Stores will have a cut room with all the end-cuts, they'll usually just give you whatever you want, plywood, 2x4 ends, whatever.

Most appliances have enough components for at least one big project (fridges/freezers being the exception, they're good for just about nothing but sheet metal). Old TVs and VCRs are plentiful these days for free. Tons of basic components inside them. Stereos, old computer power supplies, motherboards, even phones are good. Just on down-cycled items that people keep until they next see me, about once a year I have a scrapathon where I haul out the blowtorch and pliers and salvage everything I've accumulated and not bothered to strip yet. I've never had to buy parts, except a few specialty things, and I build all sorts of stuff in my spare time.