I have recently returned from our family holiday in Orlando Florida, where as usual I used the US trip as an excuse to stock up on a few items that are cheaper, or simply not available on this side of the pond.
Electrostaticmagic want £239.00 ($370.00) for what looks like a Frost kit that you can buy direct for £124.96 ($194.00), which is still rather more than I was willing to pay.
So the first item on my shopping list was an air assisted Powder Coating system from Harbor Freight at $65.99 (£42.50) along with some Black, Red White and Yellow media at $5.99 (£3.80) each for 16oz (453g).
Although this is a 110V/60Hz unit, I will run it off my 110V/50Hz site transformer and I am entirely confident that it will work just fine, just like many of my other US bought 110V tools do.
There are also a bunch of potential upgrades for the Harbor Freight version detailed over at diyAudio.
Next up was a load of imperial taps, 44 in total, ranging from 1/4-28 to 15/16-16 for $29.99 (£19.51), the set included standard, spiral and roll taps for many of the smaller sizes.
The main reason for the purchase was for the 15/16-16 spiral tap that this is the same thread as on the Roton ballscrew nuts, and this was one of the cheapest ways of buying one.
I also bought a set of 7 pipe thread taps ranging from 1/16-27 to 1-11 1/2 for $39.99 (£26.00) as these are always handy for compression type fittings, many of which I have on various parts of my Beach Buggy oil and fuel lines.
I bought a 1″ toolmakers vice from ebay seller jtsmachinery for $25.95 (£16.88) to go with the 2″ one I brought back last year.
I also bought a few other milling cutters and arbours from the same seller.
On my return I paid a visit to Aldi as they had sent out a flyer that said their Multi purpose circular saw was back in stock at £29.99 ($46.50) and having read good things about it on Mike Cox’s site decided I would buy one.
It came with a flyer for additional blades at £12.00 ($18.60)for 2 or £17.00 ($26.35) for 3 with £6.00 ($9.30) P&P!
Now that sounded extremely expensive for replacement blades, so a quick search on ebay and aliexpress showed up some 110mm 40 tooth 20mm bore slitting saws suitable for up to 10K rpm for $3.70 (£2.45) each with free shipping, which to my mind is a much more sensible price.
Whilst I was there I also bought a mini toaster oven for £19.99 ($31.00) that had been on offer about a week ago but was still in stock.
This will be useful for curing the powder coated parts, as I am sure my wife will not want them anywhere near the kitchen oven :o)