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I’ve got a few links I’d like to highlight for people who are into tinkering and mechanical stuff. If you are a tinkering hobbyist you know how frustrating it can be to find exactly what you need, except the store that sells it has a 1000$ minimum order, or the part is only available in 10,000 unit pallets. Thats fine if you are a big company, not so useful for individuals. So here are a few links to places that have good stuff at reasonable prices, and no or low minimum order requirements.

• Small Parts – This shop bills itself as “the hardware store for researchers and developers,” which is an accurate description. They sell everything from nuts and bolts (made out of boring old steel, or fun things like stainless, titanium or nylon), to various types of tubing and raw metals, to tools like pana-vices and tweezers of all types. Basically they offer all the high precision, odd material stuff you won’t find at a regular hardware store. No minimum order!
• eMachineShop – This online machine shop has their own CAD software (Windows only, unfortunately) that allows you to design a part (or import an already designed part in DXF format, a popular cross software CAD format), and then submit it to their server, and have it machined for you in whatever quantity you desire. You choose the materials, finishes, packaging and everything else, the program’s intelligent software calculates the cost and lead time for your project, and then bills your credit card when you submit the order. The process if very fast, and reasonably priced. Cost for one-offs is pretty high, but the price drops dramatically at more than 10 units, which is still a decent number for the serious hobbyist. The software is a basic but very flexible CAD program, and its ability to import DXF files means that if you are already familiar with SolidWorks or AutoCAD or something, you can continue to use it, and just export files to the eMachineShop software. The intelligent software is great for people who have never done machining before, as it will check your design for you and make suggestions for easier or cheaper machining, or let you know if you part is impossible to machine. No minimum order, but the price breaks are dramatic if you buy more than one item.
• ExpressPCB – In the same vein as eMachineShop, ExpressPCB is a company that offers free software that allows you to design a schematic and a printed circuit board for your electronics project, and then, from within the program, get an automated price quote, and make your purchase. The whole process if very fast due to the complete automation of the system. Prices are reasonable, and they offer good deals on ‘mini boards’, which are 2.5” X 3.8” boards, three for 51$, which is a good package for hobbyists for whom exact size is not very important. They do one, two, three and four layer boards with screen printing, plated through holes, and other professional features. I’ve seen boards they have produced, and they are always top quality at a reasonable price, and fast turn around. The free software (again, Windows only, boo) is good CAD software for doing schematic drawing and PCB design (I use it for my designs even when I’m not using their service), and the software imports and exports a few common formats, so you aren’t locked into their software forever. No minimum order, but again, prices decrease fast the more you buy.
• American Science and Surplus – No hobbyist link list would be complete without the bestest surplus dealer ever. American Science and Surplus (or ASS, as I like to call it), buys up large quantities of everything from motors, to lenses, to lab materials to household items to toys to god knows what else. Their website is pretty well layed out, and the descriptions of the items are classic. You can actually entertain youself for hours by reading their clever descriptions of items, humorous titles, and hilarious self deprecation. Clearly they understand their audience. Shipping is fast, products are cheap, and while much of it is low quality surplus, they always reflect that fairly in the price. And if you are looking for something special like microscopes or tools, they sometimes have amazing deals on quality equipment. ASS does have a modest 10$ minimum order, but you should have no trouble reaching this value with all their cool stuff.
• Harbor Freight Tools – Harbor Freight Tools is a tool company that sells hardware and tools, like drill presses, pneumatic equipment, circular saws, and the like. Most of it is cheap Chinese made stuff, but again, the quality is fairly reflected in the price. For someone who isn’t going to use their drill press every day, it doesn’t make sense to buy a 400$ awesome press. I got a drill press for 40$ that is great for the price, and an amazing value. It might not hold up to daily use in a professional shop, but my biweekly drilling doesn’t slow it down at all, since 40$ was all I could afford, its better than no drill press! If you need a specialty tool for occasional use, you can probably get a great price on it from Harbor Freight. No minimum order, but watch out for high shipping costs due to heavy tools. Check to see if they have a retail shop in your area! Note, if you see a great sale price on the website, print the page out and take it with you to the retail shop, sometimes the shops don’t have the most recent pricing on their items, but they will honor the pricing on the webpage as long as you bring in the printout! I bought a 40 foot silver tarp there and I saved over 60$ because I brought in the webpage printout, they had no knowledge of the low sale price in the retail shop, but the did honor the webpage price.
• All Electronics – If you need a special electronic component it makes sense to go to a shop like Mouser or DigiKey but if you just need some LEDs, or cheap pots, or sockets or something, a surplus electronics outlet makes more sense. Why pay 5$ each for a pot that matches all your exact specs when you could pay 1.25$ for a pot that is basically what you need. They don’t have everything, but they have a lot of stuff, so before you go to a fancier electronics outlet, check out All Electronics, and see if they have what you need, or something close enough, at a much lower price. They also have good prices on PCB etching supplies if you make your own boards and need raw ferric chloride or cheap copper clad boards. No minimum order!
• Online Metals – Online Metals is a shop that sells raw metal products, such as sheet, tube, rod, etc. They have a wide range of materials, good prices, and their website calculates price for cut-to-size and cut-to-length items. No more waiting three days to hear back on your cut to size price quote, the webpage does it automatically. If you need a certain length of rod, or size of sheet, their prices are very reasonable, and they have no minimum order. They sell some of the same stuff as Small Parts, listed above, but the fact that you don’t need a special price quote for cut items means if you are just buying raw materials, you’ll get faster turn around from Online Metals. They also have a good website with excellent information, as well as the ability to display sizes in gauge, inches or millimeters depending on your needs.
• Online Plumbing Supply – Sometimes you just need some big copper fittings, or weird valves, or something else that your local Home Despot doesn’t carry. So where do you go for strange plumbing supplies? Online Plumbing Supply, of course. They have very low prices, tons of stuff, a decent website, and good information about their products. This is a good place to go for all those strange little fittings you might need. No minimum order.

• eBay.com – Yes, eBay. You can find people selling all sorts of horrible crap all over the place, but amongst the plush dolls, the collectible beer cans and the kangaroo scrotums, you can find some good deals on materials or tools. Make sure you know what you are getting, and understand that used items may be damaged, and new items may be surplus from weird places, and not work exactly like you expect. Check the seller’s feedback carefully, and if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. Someone might be trying to screw you, so be careful. Also, read descriptions very carefully, and make sure you understand their payment options and shipping costs (sometimes a cheap item may have very high shipping and handling!), and if something about the deal looks fishy, pass it up. There is no such thing as a once-in-a-lifetime deal on eBay, if something is up this week, it will be up again next week. With all these warnings though, know that with care, you can find some interesting and useful items. In recent days I bought new brake pads for my scooter, a surplus vertical deflection amplifier plugin for my Tektronix oscilloscope (at about .03% of its MSRP), and a big handful of PIC microcontrollers, all at very low prices. I’ve only been screwed once on eBay, and it was for an 11$ auto manual, so I don’t feel so bad about it.

  Well, I hope this helps some of you tinkerers, and if anyone else has a supplier they think would go well in this list, let me know, and I’ll put it up!

Last night at fire spinning practice at the City Museum we got to test a new flamethrower. It was good, because like in any group, tensions can ocasionally get high, misunderstandings can cause hurt feelings, and a group feels growing pains as it trys to find out how it wants to handle the dangers (quite literal dangers, in this case) of having more people around.

One of my fellow spinners was not very happy due to the tension, and the fact that his propane tank was empty. He had brought with him version 2 of a large recreational flame thrower that he wanted to test, but was out of gas.

The flamethrower design is simple. A standard propane grill style tank is filled with liquid propane. When you open the valve, this liquid propane begins to boil, and turns into a gas as it leaves the tank. This gas is mixed with air, and ignited to cook your food. However, the tank can only boil propane away at a certain rate, otherwise the tank ices up, since the vaporization of the propane sucks the heat out of the tank. If the tank ices up, you don’t get any more gas until it thaws.

In this flame thrower, the LP tank is connected via a propane regulator to a secondary holding tank. This tank holds pressurized propane gas, instead of holding liquid propane. Coming out of the tank is a 3/4” steel pipe, with a T adapter on the end. One part of the T goes to the regulator, which fills the tank. The top part of the T goes to a gas ball valve. Coming from this valve is a long piece of the same 3/4” pipe. At the top of the pipe a small propane torch is attached to provide a pilot light.

To activate the flame thrower, you close the ball valve, and open the regulator up to around 30 PSI. The LP tank slowly pressurizes the second tank, and when you reach 30 PSI (which takes a minute), then you quickly open and close the ball valve, releasing a burst of pressurized propane from the top of the pipe. As the gas passes the pilot light, it ignites in a tremendous ball of flame. As the gas burns, it forms a 20 foot tall tower of flame, and a concussive explosion.

But as I was saying, we had no propane. One of the proprietors of the museum came out to see what we were up to, and when he realized we had no propane, he went out back and grabbed a tank for us to use. This instantly perked things up (remember the tensions I mentioned?). After a few good test explosions, the proprieter came back. At first we thought he was going to ask us to stop, but instead he asked us if we would take the apparatus way up onto a stone tower out in front of the museum, and make some big cool fireballs out where everyone could see. Clearly we were his kind of freak. So we lugged the rig up into the tower, and proceeded to release mighty bursts of fire that attracted the attention of all the people living in the lofts across the street, as well as setting off a car alarm (twice).

After the excitement of the flamethrower and the satisfaction of having caused a ruckus, the evening went much better, proving that truly there is no problem that isn’t best solved with an explosive inferno of fire.

P.S. If anyone has either a whistle valve, a gas solenoid valve, or a unicycle that I can have, please contact me!

On Thursday Madalene and I went to see the Olympic torch come through town. The torch is stopping at cities around the world, and is relayed from important person to important person as it is run, by hand, through each city, burning brightly.

The torch ran down Delmar Ave., near our house. We casually wandered the block down to the street, and then stood around for a bit as motorcycles and police cars drove down the street, heralding the approaching torch. An assortment of Samsung sponsored vehicles, including an H2 Hummer, blared music as they trundled along as part of the procession. Finally, a lady holding the torch and flanked by BMW motorcycles ran past. We clapped, and on the procession went. Then we got some sandwiches.

If that sounds a little anti-climactic to you, then you’d be right. It was all quite casual, and there weren’t many people out. The cheering when the torch passed was moderate, and the parade around the torch was measly at best. The torch itself was pretty neat though, a well crafted wood and aluminum device, with a sleek look.

I rememeber when I was in Elementary school how the Olympics was the biggest event I could think of. Each classroom chose a sport to follow, and we made charts of the progress. We dressed up in costumes of our favorite countries (at the time, my favorite country was Australia) and acted out the opening ceremonies. We even tried out different olympic events like long jump and soccer. The Olympics, and the events proceeding it, were several weeks of Olympic fever at my school.

But this event was rather lackluster. It was neat to see the torch being run along, but I was surprised at how little excitement there was, and how unexcited I was. Oh well.

Tonight our fire spinning troupe had its first performance since choosing a name, “Pandora’s Matchbox”. We have a few friends who work for Opera Theater St. Louis, and tonight was a big cast/crew party. Each time they have a party, a different department is responsible for planning it, and each department tries to upstage the previous party.

Our friends in wardrobe, Barb and Caroline, were among those responsible for this party. They arranged for a DJ, good catering, plenty of booze, and they asked if we would spin some fire. We were plyed with food, booze, and monetary compensation for fuel use. Of course, they really had to twist our arms to come out and play with fire.

Nearly everyone in the group was able to come, and we had consistent fire for a few hours, with all sorts of interesting new toys, including a set of poi so big and scary that Leef, the operator, said that he felt like he was within the bowels of Hell itself. In fact for a moment the fire was so large that he was completely obscured from view by the towering wall of flame.

Of course, the crowd loved it.

All in all, we got lots of great feedback, yummy food, and we had a lot of fun. I think the next department is going to have a very hard time topping this party.

Pictures are forthcoming!

Madalene and I have been tending a garden in a local plot near our house. For a modest fee you rent a plot, and then everyone in the garden meets monthly to do work on the site. Then you just tend your garden whenever you want, and reap the rewards. Its a good situation for everyone involved, and Missouri weather, for all its hot and humid-ness, provides a long, good growing season.

This picture is of the bumper crop of raspberries and lettuce I harvested today. Our garden has several lettuce plants, and between them, they produce more lettuce than we can actually consume. The entire garden adheres pretty strictly to organic growing practices, and so it is generally assumed that a small portion of your crop will go to the insects, but things are doing pretty well without chemical assistance. Madalene has sighted several mantises in the garden, and we’ve been using beer to lure slugs away from the succulent lettuce.

The berries come from a communal plot that is stocked with overgrown raspberry and blackberry plants. Everyone helps water them, and then if you are around and the berries are ripe, you harvest and enjoy. Today I found nearly every visible berry had been harvested or eaten by bugs and birds. However, a large branch of the shrub had begun to collapse, and a small natural lean-to had been formed under its draping leaves. I got on my knees and peered underneath, discovering a cache of uneaten berries.

As in many things, the sweetest fruit comes to those who are willing to go where no one else dares, and this truth is exemplified no clearer than in the art of berry picking. I crawled under the drooping branches, pushing them gently up over myself. From my tenuous position on the ground, I grabbed handful after handful of berries from the lair, gently scooting out to place them in my basket. Many scratches and dirty knees later, I had a good quantity of fresh raspberries (and two blackberries). I ate some on salad, ate some raw, and I intend to eat some on ice cream later.

As the summer progresses, our peppers and tomatoes will come into ripeness, and carrots, basil and dill will follow close behind. In fact, the growing season is so long here, that we will probably plant another round of vegetables as these plants finish their lives.