13 Aug
2012
13 Aug
'12
12:11 p.m.
On 8/12/12 9:13 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
You are lucky. You ahve (at least) 3 such shops you can get to.
I am going to define 'London' as the area I can get to with a London bus
Pas (I do not mean the 'City of London', I mean an area about 30 miles by
30 miles. In 'London' I know of preceisely _one_ shop tht sells a
reasoanble range of electronic components [1]. I know of no shops that
will sell me small-ish qunatiites of common engineering metals (say 1m of
1/2" diamaeter CZ121 bras rodd, or similar free-machining mild steel). I
know of no shop that sells 'engineering' tools (lathe and mil lcutting
tools, individual sockets, spanenrs, etc).
[1[ Maplin stock a very small range of compoennts nwo, and even if the
web site shows something, you might find its not stocked in any of the
shops. Mind you, they do stock a reasable range of stripboard, including
one on an FR4 substrate which is not easy to get elsewhere over here.
Brick-and-mortar stores are WAY overrated.
(and dying)
I went to three different stores to buy a piece of perf board, and ended
up getting a used one at Halted (with Haltek printed on it!). The section
at Frys was completely empty at the Palo Alto and Sunnyvale store. You can't really buy a lot of this kind of stuff
on line, you need to LOOK
at it to see if you can make it work if it doesn't exactly match.
That is athe big proble, particualrly for more 'mechancial' parts like
swtiches, knobs, connectors, relays, etc. Long gone are the days when you
could wanter ito a chop and say 'gota nythign like this' and they'd find
you exactly the part you needed from soem dusty old box in the back room...
-tony