Scavenge Robot Parts

You can scavenge robot parts via faulty,damage,broken,dead electronic devices that people may consider trash. The parts that you are mosly interested are listed as follows:

• Motors - DC motors, Stepper Motors but very rare AC Motors (not very common in building a small robots), vibrating Motors( Mobile phone or pager)



• Switches - micro switches, ON/OFF switches,Flip switches..



• Capacitors - Electrolytic, monolithic, tantalum capacitors.



• diodes



• resistors



• integrated circuits - 555 timers,PN2222,2N3904,PN2907,...etc



• Pinch rollers, pulleys, gears,belts,..



• Metal rods ( toner catridges), Plastic Sheets.



• Gear headmotors - mechnaisms that move slowly.

Always be polite when it comes to asking for somebody else's electronic trash. Be very sure to ask whether it's garbage.
Gear motors are GOLD or very useful in robot building. The best gear motors are made by Micro-Mo,Maxon,Mabuchi,Nihon and Namiki (to name a few).

TIPS:

• Never expose an IC to more than 6 Volts, unless you're darn sure it can handle it. This means no hooking your circuit up to 9 Volt battery without a way of reducing the voltage!
• Never sit on an IC especially if it's pins up otherwise you will have a nasty jump which leave a very embarrasing set of bite marks. Those pins are quite sharp. Every now and then the pins manage to poke into my finger if Im not careful.