Sheds

Maplin has never catered for that particular genre

The hobbyist electronics market has changed dramatically over the last few years. It's no longer design and build from descreet components but buy modules and connect them up using SPI, I2C etc. Modules like a Raspberry Zero or a micro-controller, displays, ethernet ports, sensors for almost anything. The "maker" market that has several competing suppliers of stuff. And if you want descreets, there is CPC. Rapid farnell, RS or even eBay/Amazon. Postage, free for online orders > £5.00 (ex VAT) from CPC, if you want one resistor buy 100 or one of the series kits and have a stock. They don't go off...

Maplin haven't really been in the hobbbyist electronics market for a long time. Discos, Gaming PC's, Gadgets/Toys, all overpriced.

My local one has a Toostation. Owned by the same company, IIRC. But Wicks continue to sell the same product at a higher price.

I'd guess you think there was no immigration then?

Your local Maplin actually stocks those? Neither of mine does.

Yes I agree we have a design and build course to design and build a vertica l plotter, every one of the 11 groups have chosen the premade driver boards such as these.

Rather than buying the chip, but when theses premade boards are almost as c heap as chips :) I can't really blame them. But what is really annoting is when they want to order things like this A 2.1mm barrel conector with a PPC battery clip on it for £2-£3 when I have the bits for less than 20p and all they have to do is be able t o solder 2 wires and they'll have the item immediatly but they prefert to o rder it from amazon from china. I don't normmaly allow them to unless they are computer science students. ;-D

Each of those are still more expensive than buying a pre-made module from a mazon or ebay is usualy cheaper still. of course some items just don't work or are lower spec than expected, which is why I'm trying to explain the di ferncies between a ready build unit costing £2 from china and the sepe rate parts which if put together might cost more at £5 but actually be worth buying. I've started asking students why the lack of chicken at KFC was such a prob lem when there are loads of other chicken shops about. They claim KFC is b etter and I ask them why a chicken is a chicken what's better.

I've noticed .ots of suppliers of spetter motors and drive belts aimed at t he 3D printer market is that a sign that the 3D printers (cheaper models) a re breaking down and need replacement parts I wonder.

There are plenty of uses for toothed belts and pulleys and motors besides 3D printers.

The belts do wear when they are running 20 hours a day unlike the ones you have which probably get used a hour a week.

The ones we had needed to be left running over night, that was partly the problem, one student that does know what they are doing as he seems to collect and repair such things says ours are too far gone to do much about.

Our downsizing effort consisted of moving into a house about 20% larger with a very large double garage and a 40ft x 20ft barn/workshop. Needless to say, the crap expanded to fill the available space, exactly as Parkinson's Law predicts.

That's useful to know.

Yes but I would before I got to use 100.

Surely they all have a components counter?

Not been recently, must admit. Just assumed they'd followed the direction they started some years ago. Out of selling electronic parts. Last time I looked at their website, that side of it seemed to consist of trying to flog off existing stock at sky high prices.

Same here. I rented a 1 metre cube at the storage place. Now it's 70 sq. ft. And then we temporarily got a container to store M-I-L's excess stuff. That's all gone and the container is still full.

(I guess it's a corollary of Parkinson's Law, really. I used to have dinner with him occasionally).

To be fair I had some very good teachers and still see some of them from time to time in the pub - I think all my ex English teachers are alcoholics.

The last time I bought [some component or other] at Maplin there was a chap in a cupboard at the back of the shop who found and bagged the components, and gave me an invoice to be paid at the front of the shop. That might have been ten years ago though - eBay prices (from UK as well as Chinese suppliers) mostly make it hard to justify shopping anywhere else.

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

Sez in the local paper this evening that there're not long for the world seems they have a very poor Christmas and very poor cash flow and it did mention the pile it high and flog it off bit!....

A few days ago I considered buying 16 off 820 Ohm 1/2W metal film resistors when I was in the area, rather than sorting through my currently messed up stock at home. Despite there being three Maplins within a few miles of where I shop and one near where I work, none had more than 3 in stock.

The 2200uF 35V capacitors I recently wanted never seem to have a stock of more than 2.

If I can get away early on a Friday, I do have an RS not far away. Failing that, it's mail order.

SteveW

In the 80s about half:

and house building was nominally double what it is now.

Did he eat more slowly if there was plenty of time?