parts

[gmixstudios]

Can anyone reccomend a place to get parts from in the uk. I have been to maplins and I cant seem to get NC push buttons and body contacts. btw what is a body contact? I am bending a speak and maths set.
Rob
robertgreco5@aol.com
cheers.

[Circuitbenders]

In the UK i would recommened www.rapidelectronics.co.uk or www.cpc.co.uk for components although you may find that Maplins are actually higher quality than some of the rubbish that Rapid sell even though Maplins are a lot more expensive.

A body contact can be anything metal that you can wire to the point  on the circuitboard. I usually use big bolts from B&Q as they are easy to fix to the casing of most machines and look cool, but metal door knobs, telescopic aerials and even metal coathangers are also usable.

[papaspank]

Hello there, yes - parts... always needed in this ciruit bending lark, aren't they?

Anyhow, http://www.maplins.co.uk are always a good steadfast, and the on-line service that they have is pretty good too.

They also do 'luck bags' ... which are great!

Just bags full of many variants of the same type (a random cross-section of rotary pots for example).

always a good way of getting a wad of components for very little outlay.

After all - there's nothing more irritating than spending peanuts on a child's toy from a 2nd hand store - and then getting stung for a small King's ransom for components

[the_zombiest]

I use this guy on ebay.  He helped me out loads and sorted out a basic 'bending-kit' and all for a very reasonable price

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Circuit-Bending-And-Electronics_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm

[Circuitbenders]

hmmmm, personally i've never been that keen on the idea of special circuitbending kit and parts. As far as i can see usually its just stuff you could buy from any electronics store but labelled as 'circuitbending tools' and with the corrosponding hefty price markup.

There used to be a guy on the US ebay who sold a 'getting started in circuitbending' kit for about $200 which basically consisted of about $20 of parts and the equivelent of our Tips pages.

This is part of the reason why we don't sell kits as we couldn't justify charging as much as we'd have to just for some parts anyone could get anywhere, we're not Kenton you know..................

Sorry, i'm ranting now, this is just something that really irritates me.

[andy_wheels]

i was thinking of ordering from that ebay 'bendables' shop. seems like the prices are actually pretty good, cheaper than places like maplin.

does anyone know of a source for cheap toggle switches? cheapest i can find are 50p'ish which isnt bad but i'm modding a couple of fm based pss's (i'm planning of a multi-fm keyboard drone ensemble  ) and need 8 toggles per keyboard so the costs soon add up....

are those maplin 'luck' bags often very lucky? seems like a cheap way to get a few spare pots.

[sponge]

I bought a maplin lucky bag of pots - turned out to be an "unlucky" bag...  ended up with over half the bag being these huge 10M1 log pots - too big to use a lot.  and then i got a load of pcb mount 4k7 pots, which are good, but they fall apart if you turn them too far (poor stops).  the values were really odd...   i'd say just buy a selection of 100k, 1k, 500k pots etc.  maplin are much more expensive than most places - i buy from rapid electronics (UK).  they are cheaper, but as i have said in another post, beware of the cheaper toggle switches that melt!

[Signal:Noise]

The bendables guy is pretty good, got a selection of pots and switches from him, he's cheap and delivers really quickly as well.