A treasure trove of maker goodness (Hording Trigger Warning)

Well, I just got back from a visit with a very nice gentleman named @Fred_Miller He isn’t a member, but noticed my post about wanting an old DEC terminal and a couple of 8" disk drives and offered me some from his collection.

He has been at his current location since the 1980’s but his land lord recently died and the man’s son want to get the building to store his classic car collection. The result is that Fred has a large collection of electronics, engineering, and science stuff that he has collected over the years and desires to give it away to people that will use it (either for its original purpose or to re-purpose it). I will list some of the major things I can remember, but the place is worth the visit from every able bodied member and our like minded friends. @zmetzing was there with me an can further attest to the sheer wonder of the place and its stuff

The only caveat is that the walk paths are narrow and you frequently have to step around and over stuff. So only go if your physically fit enough for that.

Now first @ChrisPattison contact this man immediately. He has a number of high voltage power supplies that will meet the need for your vacuum deposition work that your doing. To put it in perspective the most powerful system he has is 25,000 W, which can provide 2500V at up to 10A. But he has other more reasonable ones for what you are trying to do.

@Ashley_Newland @OpCode @Tron There are a number of devices that may prove interesting to science, including research lasers, numerous vacuum pumps, heating chambers, vacuum chambers, etc… Well worth the time to visit

@JohnK for you and your robotics friends there are a vast hoard of computer controlled motion devices like X-Y tables single axis motion, etc.

@bgangwere For the machine shop and metal shop there are some very interesting items including roughly two tons (he purchased a lot) of resharpened end mills in a variety of shapes and sizes. He also has a lot of metal angle iron and other scrap.

He has all of the material except the panels for drop ceiling. Large collection of hardware, casters, plumbing fittings, etc. Good for its original uses, but also of interest to the creative folks for repurposing @Photomancer

@Lampy @artg_dms In addition to the electronic stuff there is a huge assortment of test gear, power supplies, etc. The business performed chip and silicon wafer testing for various companies. I suspect that Art and this gentleman could spend several years chatting…

Anyway, the point is that I think nearly every member would find items of interest. So here is the contact information:

Fred Miller
email: mil-tec at msn dot com
13948 Distribution Way
Farmers Branch, TX 75234

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Thanks for the heads up!!

Well then… :no_mouth:

Are there some people that would like to go over as a group to look at the items. I’m suggesting this mainly as a convenience to this gentleman so he is not getting a lot of calls.

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Good idea David! I did tell him about thispost and our 1000 members contacting him and he was fine with that.

“My God, it’s full of stars!”

Everything Walter just said is true. It is amazing on the inside…

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Respectfully,

:smile:

…X…

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Glad you asked …

(and this is just a tiny fraction before I was so overwhelmed that I forgot to take more pictures)

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If anyone is going over this week and wants a second set of eyes, give me a shout.

I’d love to go some evening or weekend though I’m out of town this coming sat/sun. Happy to transport items back to the space in my pickup.

Well, we had another group drop by Fred’s place today. I think all who attended will affirm my original description about this place. I took a few pictures and some video. I am posting the pics here, and placing a copy of the video on the members drive M:/WalterAnderson/FredsPlace

The video files are roughly 9Gb, so if someone who knows how to process them into something useful would like to do so, please do. I will delete in a few days. They will take a couple of hours to finish uploading from my home computer.

The largest roll of resistors I have ever seen…

And a shelf full of these rolls of resistors.

Just an example of the eclectic devices…

Oh man oh man oh man.

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I sent an e-mail but never heard back. This is, of course, one of those things which can happen with e-mail.

Wow, a friend and I spent around 5 hours digging through stuff and turning a giant hv power supply into something more manageable. If you could imagine needing some electronic component, there is probably atleast a case of them. I definitely plan on going back and looking through more of the stuff, as I don’t think any of us even began to scratch the surface.

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@Fred_Miller was very gracious to let us invade his magical domain, the Nerd Disney World. My sons are still aghast at the coolness of everything they saw. My brain was definitely overwhelmed immediately and after 2+ hours there was about to explode. The poor car could not fit another thing.

We should coordinate a crew to help Fred get the place cleared out and everything to a good home.

Thanks Fred!

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Did ya’ll decide to take parts of it? Each supply was soooo huge!

Yes, the parts are currently residing in the back of my car, and I am looking at splitting them into two separate racks to make the setup more manageable. I am currently wanting to place the variable transformer and the two large step up transformers into one case along with the rectifier and then place the 6 capacitors into another case.If you have any ideas or thoughts on this, feel free to chime in, and the thing does only run on 220v single phase, not 3 phase. With a second variable transformer, you could even split this into two separate power supplies running on 110v, but it would probably need to be a 40 or so amp, 110v circuit. If anyone has a need to use this, I will be happy to bring it up to the space, in fact, we are hoping to rebuild it at the space, just need to check on the temporary storage of it there, while we are working on it. If anyone needs an adjustable HV supply, there is one built into a rack, that is rated for 16KVDC at 225mA.

Yeah, I was looking at the 18kv unit. It is more suited to what I do. Mainly as an input to Marx Generators or other cascades.

Your plan to split stages is a good idea. Good luck with the caps, they are HEAVY!

Thanks, I will probably need it…
You know where the real fun HV transformer would be at? Didn’t I see an x-ray unit sitting by the side door?

That unit was temperature tester. It blasts cold/ hot air at single components. I thought it was a laser or x-ray unit too. I looked it up and Fred confirmed it was not x-ray unit.