I am making a proposal for an additional forum to be added.

It would be a Materials Resource Forum.

In the daily work I do I find it time consuming to locate vendors and resources for materials I need to complete a job. This may be anything from stainless steel tubing to 24 awg PTFE insulated wire to G10 bars and plates to 3/4" X 12" OD borosilicate glass viewing ports.

I have accumulated a list and will post it somewhere on these forums, but I really feel this group would benefit more if the list was in a forum that was simply a materials resource forum.

I'm not trying to advertise for any given company, or group of companies, I just want to make it easier to find materials needed in the many and varied projects I have read about here.

Quote from CanoeTTT on January 6th, 2013, 07:32 AM

I am making a proposal for an additional forum to be added.

It would be a Materials Resource Forum.

In the daily work I do I find it time consuming to locate vendors and resources for materials I need to complete a job. This may be anything from stainless steel tubing to 24 awg PTFE insulated wire to G10 bars and plates to 3/4" X 12" OD borosilicate glass viewing ports.

I have accumulated a list and will post it somewhere on these forums, but I really feel this group would benefit more if the list was in a forum that was simply a materials resource forum.

I'm not trying to advertise for any given company, or group of companies, I just want to make it easier to find materials needed in the many and varied projects I have read about here.

Interesting proposal, I will present this request to the staff members.

Hi CanoeTTT, since you had mentioned you have resources and connections
for products, I was wondering if you knew where I could buy fiberglass insulated #30, 31 or #32 nichrome wire, I can not find it.
Also, all here at the forum would like to get our hands on triple insulated Stainless Steel wire, I don't remember the size off hand but we can find out if you know of a place. Thanks in advance, Jeff.:cool::D:P

PS: I have also been looking for ptfe insulated wire, but of course we/I don't have a budget, let alone a large budget.

Quote from Jeff Nading on January 6th, 2013, 04:37 PM

Hi CanoeTTT, since you had mentioned you have resources and connections
for products, I was wondering if you knew where I could buy fiberglass insulated #30, 31 or #32 nichrome wire, I can not find it.
Also, all here at the forum would like to get our hands on triple insulated Stainless Steel wire, I don't remember the size off hand but we can find out if you know of a place. Thanks in advance, Jeff.:cool::D:P

PS: I have also been looking for ptfe insulated wire, but of course we/I don't have a budget, let alone a large budget.

I'll start looking around. I am more familiar with raw material sources, but I'll take a look around and see what I can find in the electrical sources we use in my workplace.

In decades gone by, we had good results finding hard-to-find items from...

Thomas Register:
http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0535.html

McMaster-Carr:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#

Grainger:
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg/start.shtml

And even Edmond Scientific:
http://www.scientificsonline.com/

Note: "Edmond Scientific" was sold and is now "Edmond Scientifics"
Don't know what they have now.

HTH,
Gary S.

Quote from Gary S. on January 7th, 2013, 07:16 AM

In decades gone by, we had good results finding hard-to-find items from...

Thomas Register:
http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0535.html

McMaster-Carr:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#

Grainger:
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg/start.shtml

And even Edmond Scientific:
http://www.scientificsonline.com/

Note: "Edmond Scientific" was sold and is now "Edmond Scientifics"
Don't know what they have now.

HTH,
Gary S.

They have all come up empty, thanks CanoeTTT and Gary.

Hi CanoeTTT, I presented your proposal to the other staff members, we all agreed it would not be a good idea at this time to have a subforum for material links and such.
We talked about something like this before. The prob was that this is like free advertising for businesses and anyone member with a main or side business. Even though that's not the intent you have here and we understand this. People will try to post there businesses, that's really not what we are trying to do, unless its open source... its a mess, would be very hard to moderate and take's much time. It would also invite spammers, as much of our time now is spent protecting the forum from them. We did not let  any members advertise before because most that wanted to were not open source about it. We had many problems with them and they had to be banned from the forum. We don't want or need these kind of problems, don't want to go through this again with other members. So we have to draw the line here and hope you can see/understand the problems this kind of thing would incur. We do want/need your knowledge as this is the best contribution anyone member can give and look forward to your continued support in this way. It's going to be a wild and fabulous ride in the days ahead, thanks for joining  CanoeTTT,    
Jeff.:D