When it came to designing our scoring arm, we found that the materials in the kit just wouldn't cut it. Sure, the kit has the tubing for the inner arm. It has the stock to make a motor coupling and a custom nut. It even has the longest screw I've ever seen, a 24 inch piece of steel that's perfect for driving the inner arm. The kit was missing one thing though: The 1.25" square tube we would need to create the outer arm.
When it came time to order the part, I knew exactly where I could find it:
McMaster-Carr.
For those of you who don't know, McMaster is the go-to place for just about anything an engineer could want. It has everything from fasteners to fire extinguishers, calipers to 100 foot long pieces of steel bar stock. In this case, however, we needed a piece of aluminum tubing that was 1.25"x1.25" with 1/8" walls. It just so happens that McMaster has a piece with those exact specifications. 6063 Aluminum Tube, 36" long. The order was placed on a Friday afternoon, and the material came in the following Monday.
So if you ever need a piece of material, any material, fast, just go to McMaster-Carr's website and place an order. Just be sure not to get caught up browsing through their 480,000 item catalog.
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