Thread: Materials on hand

This may be an odd post but what materials to people keep on hand, this just for machining i have some sheet material but that's not what this is about, most of the things i get up to are on weekends and at night so its nice just to grab some thing from the rack and get into it, also with suppliers having minimum orders ,if i need some thing specific i have to bulk up the order to get to the minimum

so here is a rough list of what i have lengths are from 1.5 meters to about 100mm any smaller is just in the odds and ends box , there is no scrap/junk as my old boss used to say its just that some bits are a bit smaller than others

aluminium round may be 2011 and / or 6061 i mark the ends of the bars

100mm

50mm

40mm

25mm

12mm

10mm

an assortment of plate, flat and angle sections

Brass

32mm

19mm

an assortment of flat section

steel round

50mm EN36B

50mm castiron

32mm 12L14

1 1/4 12L14

25mm 1020 and 4140

24mm 1020

7/8 1020

19mm 1020

11/16 1045

16mm 1020

9/16 1020

13mm 1020

12mm silver steel

11mm 1020

10mm 1020

3/8 1020

8mm 1020

6.5mm 1020

and some assorted bits of flat BMS and some boiler plate that i slice bits off as i need

Aceteal rounds

32mm

25mm

20mm

i know the has been a bit long winded, this all stored on a single 1200 X 400 shelf and the longer bits standing up in 300 x 300 box
so its not a huge area, some times specific jobs i will order material in for as needed and some of this is leftover from jobs

how do others do it ? any other thoughts on grades to keep

what do i do, mess around with old cars and motorbikes and making bits to maintain the works shop, so not really making model engines or clocks or things like that

I'm nowhere near that organised.
Most of my stash is stuff scavenged from the Mens shed rubbish pile, metal merchant scrap bin off cuts, deceased estates, sides of the road etc, so I don't really know what specific alloy it is.
That's probably because most of what I make it doesn't really matter.

I tend to make do with what I have laying around and might buy something specific for 10% of projects.

I'm with Bob. No way do I keep a large inventory of lots of stock.

Most of my stuff is either scrap I have accumulated or, if I buy for a project, I try to buy offcuts at local steel place at a discount and always try to buy more than i need so I have extras.

If i go hunting for stuff at scrap metal, I'll often buy stuff if its a nice piece because at scrap metal prices, steel is a bargain!

Simon

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Not sure I'm much better. I have bits of brass up to say 3/4", lumps of steel (alloy and MS) and cast iron up to around 120 or so diameter, bits of plastic of various sizes, Al in reasonable lengths up to 50mm as well as a few chunks up to around 130mm. There is also some thickish steel flat (say 20 or 25mm) that used to belong to injection moulding dies. I just try to use it up. If I need something I generally just fossick around. There is usually something that will do.

Michael

I'm similar to other guys, fair bit of steel, sheet steel, aluminum, brass, delrin etc.
It would take to long to catagorise it all, and it's all over the place.
Your organized, lol

we have about 10t+ of various material in stock at work, and about 50% of the time we don't have the right bit for the job at hand.