SparkFun Forums

[pcman312]

What kinds of construction materials do you like to keep on hand (or gravitate towards) for project(s) you work on?

[Ross Robotics]

Screws
Bolts
Scrap metal

Screws is the major item I collect. I have bucket fulls of screws and bolts. I am talking about 5 gallon buckets..

[skimask]

You must've got your buckets from the same place I did. Buckets and buckets full of nuts, bolts, washers, and not one of them the size I need.

1/8" plywood
scrap sheets of plastic and thin metal (basically ripped off of broken equipment)
thick tagboard
2-part fast epoxy
2-part slow epoxy
super glue
rubber cement
acrylic spray
duct tape (#1!!!)
dense foam packing material
zip ties
the list goes on and on, can't have too much "crap" laying around...and I do.

[stratosfear]

Brass tubing, round and square
Brass sheet
Aluminum U-channel
Aluminum angle
Kydex scraps
FR4 (fiberglass sheet) scraps
Lexan scraps
JB Weld epoxy
26ga stranded wire
Male and female crimp pins and housings for 0.1" headers
Neodymium magnets salvaged from toothbrush heads

Cigar boxes, the nice wooden ones, for storage and enclosures. Local tobacconists supply them for a $3 cash donation that goes to a children's cancer fund.


Jon

[lyndon]

I have everything, but never what I need.
Lessee...

About 50lbs of 6061 aluminum bar 2"x4"x36"
A sheet of 3/8"x36"x36" 6061 aluminum
Various amounts of 0.062" aluminum sheet
Copper sheet
Brass bar (small amount)
Hot rolled steel bar
12L14 (free machining) steel round bar (almost gone)
6061 aluminum round bar
Aluminum angle extrusion
Aluminum channel extrusion
Offcuts of polycarbonate and acrylic sheet
10' of 1/4" PVC tubing
A few hundred feet of various sizes of flexible and stiff tubing of various plastics.
Tubing and pipe fittings

#4, #6, #8 screws, nuts and spacers in various lengths and a handful of metric and self-tapping screws
Right angle threaded brackets
3M adhesive double sided tape for electronics
3M hot glue for electronics
thermal paste
JB Weld epoxy

Does DIN rail count? Got a tiny bit of that somewhere.
Two large boxes of miscellaneous enclosures. Easier to have on hand than to visualize from a catalog.

All kinds of connectors: you name it, I probably got it. Everything from big military Cannon connectors to the little 2mm wire-to-board headers. Why, oh, why do I still have a bag of Centronics printer connectors? And of course, thousands of crimp pins and sockets for the above.

Hundreds of feet of 10 colors of wire (I make wire harnesses)