Electronics on a budget

Equipment is the single most expensive parts of hobby electronics. It is best not to go the cheap route here as it will save you lots and lots of hassles and irritations about equipment that doesnt work or breaks down easely. Still you dont have to spend hundreds of euro's or dollars to get good equipment.
The most important equipment you need in my opinion is the following:

Tools

Most are pretty standard, Pliers, wire stripper and heavy duty screwdriver you probably have lying around somewhere. Its still better to get your own then constantly borrow your fathers tools as you need them constantly nearby. Not to mention when your father needs his tools again or he gets angry when you misplace them.

Soldering iron

    
The soldering iron is a somewhat difficult point. There are lots of cheap ones you can get from all kinds of stores but they are unregulated or quite flimsy, and can break down sometimes (i had mine die at a somewhat inconvienent moment). I suggest you buy a good one, a weller is champ of the irons in my opinion and a soldering station is very good, it can be set to all kinds of temperatures. But they cost a bundle (especially the soldering stations) but you get quality and they will last you a long time.
I currently use a cheap iron 30Watts (its a LUX and can be bought at the praxis line shops in the netherlands), the original tip is horrible and took very little abuse. The tip was eaten away with several uses, Solder dissolves lots of metals and tips deteriorates quickly. I bought a new tip at the local electronics ship that could fit inside. The new tip is a whole lot sturdier and takes a lot of abuse i have been using it for a few years.
I also have a second iron, a somewhat more higher quality iron from antex. Its 15 watts and is geared for SMD work, as you can see at the very small tip.

Measurement

A general purpose meter can be had very cheaply (7 euros) it can be handy to buy 2 of them, one for constant measuring of a parameter and the other you poke around stuff.

Prototyping

Breadboard is handy for prototyping projects, first build them on a breadboard. If that works nicely, its time to build it on a proto board. Or etch your own board (thats for another article). Here its better to get the largest breadboard you can get, the bigger the better. Why the largest you can get? There is always a moment that you run out of space for a project, the largest boards are filled up quite quickly even if you cram a lot of stuff on it.
I have several breadboards.

Storage

Get a big component cabinet for components. I got a 50 tray storage cabinet for about 30 euros at the praxis (its a dutch shop) they provide plenty of storage for all your components. The bigger the better, you can organise all your resistors that start with 47 in one seperate box, or you can group them in values from 1 to 10, 10 to 100, 100 to 1000ohms.
I grouped the resistors on their first numbers. For example: the tray 47 contains all the resistor values starting with 47, like 4.7ohms 4.7Kohms 470Kohms etc.
There are many kinds of capacitors so i group them differently. Values from 1000uf to 100uf and that sequence down to 1pf.
SMD components i just keep them in the reel i got them and put them in a antistatic bag. The reels are cumbersome to store and quite springy. They get lodged in between the trays damaging the reels and sometimes spilling out the components. I also have a lot of boxes with large lots of components, recently i got a resistor kit of 100 metal film resistors per value, totaling 6200 resistors. The box i use also for large quantities of components and chips.

Components

When starting out its always handy to get an so called resistor kit. It contains a large selection of commonly used resistors (about 30 kinds in quantities of 10). You restock that selection once in a while. The same exists for capacitors, diodes, transistors. The web shop futurlec has an excellent selection of these kits quite cheap. They should be your starting point, recycled components can be a hassle sometimes and sometimes the part you need is not in your junk pile.
Most components can be head cheaply from various webshops.

Ebay is a real goldmine for hard to get or mass quantities of components for cheap. Look for bargains in the Business industrial/electronic components section. There is almost nothing you cant find. Some ebay sellers that have interesting stuff.
There are lots of other ebay sellers that sell large quantities of often used components very cheaply. Most of them send them quite quickly but you need to make a ebay and paypal account, a creditcard is also handy in this case for fast payments. Just use the search function on ebay.

Recycling

Yes recycling is the other great source of difficult to find or cheap components, some components are really not worth the effort of salvaging. Resistors comes to mind, they can be had for very low prices. I buy them at farnell for prices like 2 eurocent per resistor (minimal quantity is 50 pieces).
The parts that are worth salvaging are:
The above components cost a premium or are easely extracted.
IC's can be a problem sometimes, but can be extracted easely with a paint stripper heat gun. You just heat the legs of the chip up to a certain temperature so the solder starts to melt and you can remove the chip with ease. Work with 2 people, one as the heater, the other as the chip remover. This way you can extract heaps of chips this way.
Specialty or power transistors are sometimes expensive. Power transistors are easely extracted with their heat sink. You just apply some solder to the solder joints so you get a thick solder joint. This excess of solder makes it easyer to suck the solder up with a solder sucker. The component isnt usually completely free but with some pliers you can loosen the leads from the board.
Specialty transistors like RF transistors are a prize, but extract them carefully they are more sensitive but you can extract them the same way like you do with normal transistors.
Inductors can be useful for your own switch mode power supplies. And they can be quite pricey.
Transformers can be handy, for winding your own for instance. The previous windings can be loosened if you boil the transformer for a while in a cup or pan of hot water. This will loosen the glue keeping the transformer together. This only works for ferrite transformers.
Big capacitors are usually easy to remove from a board as they are big and can be grabbed while unsoldering. (watch your fingers!)
Motors, gears and other mechanical stuff are very useful for robotics.
You dont come across sensors often but are handy and should be removed right away. There are tons of applications for those.
All kinds of appliances have all kinds of components. Here is a small list what you can expect from them.
This list is not exhaustive but these are what i found of use:

Samples

Many semiconductor companies give out samples for free, but some are quite restrictive about what components they offer. I tend to use this source of components if there is no other choice or the component i want is too expensive to be had from distributors or not available. Some specialty components are hard to get and difficult to find in the junk pile. Usually IC's are sampled sometimes big power transistors/mosfets. Please do not abuse this resource to the max, order as much as you need +1 for an accident. Thats the rule i usually keep.

Links

Ladyada has a excellent tutorial about procurement of electronic components, and also a lot of nice projects.

Inkoopacties is a excellent site where people group together to get bulk discounts of various items, lots of them are electronics related. (Dutch speaking)

If i need large cheap quantities of components i usually go to ebay.

This tutorial is very helpful how to get started and getting good equipment for your electronics hobby.

Voti.nl is a dutch webshop with cheap lots, and unusual items (side view motor assembly from cars!?). Home to a lot of PIC related things, and a very popular PIC programmer.

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Last update at: 17-06-2005