There Ain't No Robot Store
When taking into account the population as a whole, there are very few robot builders in the world. This directly translates to the non-existence of retail outlets that cater to this niche hobby. Builders of fine robots have always had to make do with the electronics available from online retailers, and if they are lucky, local hobby stores. I am learning that this is the first major hurdle to becoming a robot builder.
One would think that with the advent of online shopping, that niche hobbies such as robotics would become easier. Well, it's true in terms of variety of parts and selection, but not necessarily in terms of ease of obtaining. In years past, one could go to Radio Shack or another electronics store and be able to purchase standard hobby servos. You wouldn't have much of a selection, but you could get them right there and then. Nowadays, you can buy servos for much cheaper online and with a wide variety of choices, but you have to wait for delivery. Futhermore, places like Radio Shack have stopped stocking items like servos, so the local retail option is no longer available. This is not just a change in the electronics retail industry, but a chance in American culture as a whole. When living in a "throw-away" culture, there is little market for individual parts to repair things.
One problem I have been specifically having is trying to find metric threaded rods for my RepRap Mendel, a 3D printer I have been planning to build. I can find imperial threaded rods in hardware stores (this is America, where metric apparently means communism), but metric threads are near impossible to come by. This means that I am going to have to order the heaviest (and therefor costliest to ship) parts online. For much of the frame, I could make do with imperial threaded rods, but for the drive shafts there really can be no substitutes unless I want to rewrite some of the software that will drive the robot.
I can't help but be a little bothered and worried about America's lack of local robot parts. It's not that robot building is incredibly important to the US economy, but being able to make things actually is. The lack of parts is an indication of people's lack of interest in fixing things, and just buying something new instead. This is both environmentally appalling, and economically frightening. When more market value is placed on products being high volume rather than high quality, US manufacturers find themselves unable to compete with outsourced production lines. We all know that China produces high volume, low quality products, and we all know that the US will never be able to compete with them in the marketplace of making cheap crap. This inevitably leads me to think that we are in trouble. Our inability to fix broken products means there is less money in the repair business (which is local) and more money in the replacement business (which is foreign). Not to mention, I still can't find parts for my frickin' robot!
This might just be one of those problems without a good solution. I certainly wouldn't recommend starting a brick and mortar robotics store, but I don't know how there can be one if it isn't economically feasible. I suppose I'll just keep ordering parts online.
