Prototyping

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Bay Area Prototyping Resources

Shops

Stanford Product Realization Lab http://www.stanford.edu/group/prl/prl_site/

Students can take a one hour safety training session and then use the lab for a daily or quarterly fee. Open for four hour blocks of time throughout the quarter. Not open during the summer. Resources include “traditional machining, woodworking, foundry, plastics molding, welding, finishing, and metrology tools. State-of-the-art computer-aided drawing, manufacturing, and prototyping systems are also available.”


Tech Shop – Menlo Park and San Francisco http://techshop.ws/

Monthly membership and various classes give you access to everything from CNC plasma cutters to industrial sewing machines. This is sort of like a PRL for non-university folks and they have equipment that the PRL doesn't have.

PRL Suppliers List

Great list of places to get stuff in the Bay Area.

https://productrealization.stanford.edu/resources/external-suppliers

Some Of My Favorites

Hardware:

McMaster Carr mcmaster.com They have almost any piece of hardware you could ever want. Prices are ok.

Ace on Alma - 875 Alma St Palo Alto


Metal:

Alan Steel, 505 E Bayshore Rd, Redwood City, CA 94063

On-line Metals http://www.onlinemetals.com/ Great place to get small amounts of metal


Plastic:

TAP Plastics – Mountain View, San Francisco http://www.tapplastics.com/ Best Local supplier of plastics

Douglas & Sturgess – San Francisco Supplier of all things sculptural – great supply of silicon and epoxy needs


Electronics Surplus

HSC, halted.com, 3500 Ryder St, Santa Clara, CA 95051 Close to a really good Mongolian BBQ Resturaunt (El Camino Mongolian BBQ, 3380 El Camino Real, Santa Clara)

Weird Stuff, 384 W Caribbean Dr, Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Electronic Goldmine, http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com

All Electronics, http://www.allelectronics.com

Deep Surplus: http://deepsurplus.com


New Electronics

adafruit.com

sparkfun.com

jameco.com (can pick up at will call 2 hours after you order)

digikey.com

mouser.com

parts-express.com


Wood:

Southern Lumber Co, 1402 Monterey Hwy, San Jose, CA ‎



People and Organizations

Dorkbot

http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsf/

You should really consider subscribing to their mailing list. It is a great resource for getting oddball technical questions answered.

Noisebridge

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge

Noisebridge is an infrastructure provider for technical-creative projects, collaboratively run by its members. We are incorporated as a non-profit educational corporation for public benefit. We operate primarily in a 5,600 square-foot space located in the heart of San Francisco. We teach, we learn, we share.

Laughing Squid

http://laughingsquid.com

"As our tagline suggests, one of the main objectives of Laughing Squid is featuring unique and interesting art, culture and technology. A secondary goal of ours is to help connect the art community with the tech community, by letting artists know what tools and resources are available to promote their work and in turn get the geeks out from behind their computer and experience more art."

Laughing Squid is not specifically focused on the Bay Area but the news they cover has a strong Bay Area bent to it. Worth checking out to find resources and interesting work happening in the area.