Consider purchasing components
from discount suppliers such as All
Electronics ( www.allelectronics) and
numerous other vendors on the Web
and listed in this magazine. While
many of these discount suppliers
offer seconds of lesser quality than
components from Mouser, Digi-Key,
or Jameco, you may not notice a
difference in performance.
same pans — three for $30, including
shipping.
won’t find yourself 90 percent
through a project to find you forgot
to order a part.
• Plan Ahead
Regardless of where you
purchase components, plan ahead
to avoid unnecessary shipping and
handling charges that can inflate
the cost of a project. It’s often
cost-effective to purchase the
components for your next two or
three projects at the same time,
since you’ll save on shipping (relative
to single purchases) and get
a break for bulk purchases. Similarly,
you can save on shipping by combining purchases with your friends.
• Try Kits
If your focus is construction, then
consider one of the low-cost kits
from the Nuts & Volts online store
or one of our many advertisers. Kits
are an economical alternative to
piecemeal construction, in part
because the kit suppliers buy in bulk,
and you only have to pay postage
from one source. In addition, you
I’d like to feature low-cost
projects for cost-conscious readers
in future issues of Nuts & Volts. If
you have an innovative project that
illustrates how to get the most out of
an electronics budget, then please
consider sharing your work with
your fellow readers. I look forward
to hearing from you. NV
for Engineers
• Repurpose When Possible
Although working with new
components and circuit designs is a
pleasure, it can also be expensive.
Keep a modest junk box filled with
your discarded or newly found power
supplies, circuit boards, and
components. A soldering iron,
heatsink clamp, and either a solder
sucker or braid made from discarded
coaxial cable are all you need to
extract components cleanly from a
circuit board. As a youth, I saw to it
that every discarded radio and TV
for blocks around contributed to my
parts bin.
• Use Your Imagination
When shopping for enclosures
and hardware, don’t limit your
searches to traditional sources. You
can often find equivalent supplies
in non-electronic markets. For
example, I recently searched for
three aluminum discs for a robot
project. A popular online robot
hardware supply house listed 18”
discs for $48 each, plus shipping.
In contrast, a visit to my local
hardware store turned up 16”
aluminum pizza pans for $15. Armed
with a brand and product name,
I searched on eBay and found the
www.mouser.com
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September 2008 9
