[Robotgroup] Equipment acquisition for homebrewers

[brooksdesign]

Bryan ,
  You have found that secret club. Actualy the technique we use is the stuff comes in and then we decide what to build with it. Personaly I almost never buy anything, just always be on the lookout for stuff with usable parts and materials, and have a big storage space and tolerant neighbors/spouse.
-brooks

-----Original Message-----
>From: Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jun 29, 2008 10:05 AM
>To: robotgroup at puremagic.com
>Subject: [Robotgroup] Equipment acquisition for homebrewers
>
>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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