Practical Matters

Vendors and Suppliers

When you are a maker lab, you tend to go through materials rather quickly. Here at the Bourn Idea Lab, we usually keep a variety of materials in stock to encourage making and tinkering:
  • Amazon - our go-to source for many items like tape, glue, felt, vinyl sheets, etc etc. This is where we try first before going anywhere else.
  • RAFT Bay Area - craft supplies, random fun items like wine corks and googly eyes
  • Bruce Bauer Lumber - for plywoods and fiberboards for the laser cutter
  • Uline - for pre-sized cardboard that fits in our laser cutter
  • Makershed - PLA filaments for our 3D printer
  • Jameco - basic electronics, e.g. LEDs, resistors, capacitors, batteries
  • Sparkfun - electronics for hobbyists and really cool electronic kits
  • Adafruit - even more cool electronic kits and gadgets, Flora kits for e-textiles
  • DF Robot - more robotics-focused electronics supplies like motors
  • Inventables - full sheets of acrylic (so many colors!) and large selection of special materials
  • Evil Mad Scientist
  • McMaster-Carr - nuts, bolts, other hardware. They are the main vendor for our Robotics team.