[Brandon Holley]

Joe-

Some local flavor for you...

We used to buy a ton of our metal from Mcmaster or other various online sources. With McMaster you are paying a price premium (and have a limited selection) and anywhere online involves dealing with shipping costs.

Up in Woburn, MA (about 15-20 mins north of Boston) there is a company called "Admiral Metals". For the past 5 or 6 years we have been buying a large majority of our metal stock from them. We use a lot of 1"X1" box tubing in 1/8" and 0.062" thicknesses. We generally buy 100s of feet of it as we use it for not just ourselves, but help many of the younger teams in the area too.

The real magic of this place however, is a little sub-company within the same building called "Metal Source". This is a walk-in "scrap" purchasing outfit. Now their definition of "scrap" and my definition of "scrap" are very different things. All of the metal in this area is sold by the pound, 6061, 7075, doesn't matter. The prices are as low as you will find for Aluminum stock. You often can buy pieces that are "just right" so you do not need to buy a huge piece of metal to use a fraction of it. We've used it for just about every metal need on our robot: 7075 round and hex stock for shafts, 3/16" and 1/8" thick 6061 plate, and 4.5" 6061 round stock for wheels. They have a bunch of other metals too, just not steel. Brass, copper, etc.

I feel truly lucky to have a source like this so close that we are able to drive there and get exactly what we need cheap. Hopefully you guys can check it out as well and enjoy using them too.

I have a similar contact for plastics if and when you get to that point as well...

-Brando