[Robotgroup] Equipment acquisition for homebrewers

[Bryan Bishop]

Hey all,

I'm wondering about methodologies for acquiring interesting, unique, 
useful, or 'maybe it will one day be useful' equipment (junk). 
Obviously going through the normal routines of Radio Shack and 
electronic shops isn't really going to get you much these days. 
Digikey, Mouser, etc., can do some electronic componentry, but I'm 
thinking more in terms of shop/lab equipment, and for cheap.

So here's the question. How do you, particularly, go about acquiring 
hardware that you work with ? The materials? The tools? I know that 
many of you have very, very interesting toys that you play with, and my 
collection is iffy at the moment. I've seen various suggestions around 
the web to just keep trolling ebay, craigslist and the newspaper, but 
this results only in so much. There's also been that occasional 
suggestion to go dumpster diving.

I'm interested in constructing a few general programs that facilitate 
the acquisition of this sort of equipment. For instance, I could spend 
my time clicking around on ebay and craigslist waiting for something 
interesting to pop up and catch my attention, or I could even more 
easily write a program that monitors for certain items (even though I 
don't entirely know what I am looking for) and various prices, 
locations, whatever. This would be fine if I knew the locations to 
monitor. I just don't know how people with very massive accumulations 
of 'junk' actually get that way without paying a fortune for each and 
every item. Is there some sort of secret club for cool equipment? I'm 
doubting it -- but there certainly should be, yes.

So the program that I am writing would go search the databases on a 
periodic basis, and then return results that may or may not be 
interesting. The routines for this are pretty simple to construct, but 
I'm not entirely sure of where to start searching. Where could I get a 
full list of shops and suppliers and so on for any city in the world, 
for instance? And what about websites and such listings? Does anybody 
have that sort of information besides a printed (text-only) phone book? 
I'd like to avoid print publications, but if I have to I'll look into 
some.

I'd like to hear any stories that you might have. Electronics, 
metalworking, biotech equipment, anything. It looks like the main issue 
is that you have to actually need a component for some project, and 
this eventually results in finding something locally available, but at 
the same time I'm sure there are other ways to creatively enhance your 
set of tools and stuffs, yes?

I'm sending this off to a handful of different mailing lists, so there's 
a reason why the context may seem a little odd for anybody listening.

- Bryan
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http://heybryan.org/