Free Parts for school - Los Angeles area

I started as an electronic hobbyist but I've moved up the food chain and
do it for a living now. I work at a decent size company, designing
electronics for the professional entertainment industry. However,
because I don't want to turn around and do more of it when I get home I
find I have not touched my garage full of electronics for quite some
time.

Hence I have a lot of surplus electronics and components. Is there a
trade school or maybe even a high school electronics instructor in the
greater Los Angeles area who would like a truck load of parts and all
manner of whole and partially whole electronics for the students to
practice with.

A lot of it is oriented towards audio or building disco type lighting
controllers. I also have some supplies for making your own PCBs.

Please call me or e-mail me at

--
Dan Fraser

From Costa Mesa in sunny California
949-631-7535 Cell 714-420-7535

Check out my electronic schematics site at:
http://www.schematicsforfree.com
If you are into cars check out www.roadsters.com

 

I wish I could say yes, but sadly the budget cutbacks and retirements
have forced our college district to close the electronics program.
After the next semester, it will be no more. :-(

--
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###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
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The one I attended years ago died due to student attrition.

Tom

 

I run into the same thing here in Kansas City, but my best outlet has been
the IEEE club. They use what they want for whatever they want, and sell the
rest at their sales to raise money for class trips. See if you can find a
market there. Let us know what you find.

WT

 

Your English is better than many Americans!

How is the technical education system in Italy? In the US, for the most
part, they
have always tried to force all students into to take "book learning" rather
than
classes that would allow them to persue a trade. Any profession that
involves
working with your hands is looked down upon by teachers that spent many
years studying from books. Very little "trade schools" are available, and
many that do exist are being closed. The US has a very high percentage of
students that don't finish high school, because they want to learn about
things
that they can touch. Occasionally, a high school will offer "hands on"
classes,
but as you have seen from this thread, these classes are being shut down as
well. It is frustrating, one more generation, and no one will know how to
change the oil in their cars, and finding a repairman who does know is
going to be difficult.

 

---------------
I'm hobby, hobbier, hobbiest, NO, I'm a hobbyest!!!

Learn GRAMMAR! Yeah, I know, your grammar lives in another state!

The schools are technically incompetent, they don't know what they
need or how to use it, it's truly pitiful. We need to bring more
non-bachelor-degreed technicians and 2-year technologists into the
school system to teach this stuff, but the established teaching
staff and priciplaships are all degreed and insulated from the world of
blue-collar expertise, which they were taught to denigrate for
some unknown reason, (until they need something fixed) and they
have NO IDEA of who knows what and how-to do it in the outer society.
I've tried to DONATE innumerable devices and even my own time to
schools over the years, and all they would have had to do is say: YES,
but they were paralyzed with technophobia and bureaucratic doubt for
anything that hadn't been done much before, and yet they consistently
complain that they don't KNOW how to do any of this stuff!!
-Steve

 

It's not just the States. Here in Australia I've offered tools,
equipment and even to teach courses with material and time provided
free, to my childrens high school, but those offers have always been
ignored. My youngest son has just changed to a newly opened high school
dedicated to maths and science, it'll be interesting to see their
approach, I've made the offer of several development kits, parts, built
boards, time, and support, I'm waiting to see if anything happens.

Al

 

I had a similar experience in Hamilton. Ontario, Canada. It was a real
struggle to find someone in the school system to accept the databooks and
equipment I wanted to donate.

When I was in high school, electronics was a 3-year course. We got to take
equipment home for the weekend! I remember people' reaction when I setup an
oscilloscope and two signal generators to produce spiral figures (I can't
remember the name, lysageos, or something).

Dana Raymond

 

I have been an electronic engineer for over 20 years, and what I have
seen over and over are new engineers coming out of college with no
idea which end of a soldering iron is hot. It is not necessary to
intern as a technician for four years, but it would be nice if they
had some idea of what the real world was like.

 

If they did work as a tech first, they would understand that part of
a design is to make it easy to assemble, and work on. The best
engineers I have worked with all started working with electronics before
they went to get a degree.

--


Its August 5, 2003, so I'm 51 today!
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

Yes, I do find it frustrating. No one learns hardware any more. No
wonder it takes Being 15,000 engineers to design anything.

I worked many years as a tech before I finally got a full time
engineering job. When I hire techs now its amazing how little many of
them know.

I just can't bring myself to throw the stuff out. I already tossed the
real crap but it seems most of the hardware design seems to have moved
to China. Everyone here wants to do software. I have news. The software
jobs are starting to move to India where speak English better than a lot
of Americans

I'm designing a low end DSP here but our high end unit is being done in
India to my spec as next to no one here seems to know crap about writing
tight machine code software let alone the hardware.

I even find the techs and engineers laid off from aerospace just don't
seem to have that good a knowledge. So few people are really into
hardware anymore.

Well its a god thing my company does not have a forced retirement age.
It looks like I'll just keep designing hardware until I drop. at least
there is always work for people who know how to design and repair stuff.

I'm 52 and my grandfather made it to 101. After that, well, we just buy
all our hardware from China I guess.

--
Dan Fraser

From Costa Mesa in sunny California
949-631-7535 Cell 714-420-7535

Check out my electronic schematics site at:
http://www.schematicsforfree.com
If you are into cars check out www.roadsters.com

 

in Italy the situation is the same...
There are no "hands on" classes in the technical school, and learning
is everyday more theoretical...
If a student wants to know how stuff works, he has to do it by
himself.
bye

 

Tell that to the employers who want a pedigree of degrees as long as my arm....
I was once in an interview for a microwave communications company in Montreal. I
explained to the 'gentleman' interviewing me that I don't have a bachelor's
degree but that I have designed devices and have a small lab at home and
basically learn on my own. He looked at me as if I had sprouted spontaneous
gangrenous leprosy and sneered 'Oh, you're one of those', with heavy italics on
the 'those'. I didn't get that job.

 

In message <jslYa.155072$>

Lissajous figures. ISTR you hook two sinewave oscillators up to the scope
with different frequencies, but the same amplitude. Set the scope to "X-Y"
mode and watch the patterns

Later.

 

Another Canuck I see. I'm living in Canada's 5th largest city, Greater
Los Angeles.


Yes, while I work as an engineer now, I'm one of "those" too.

I found a smaller company that is still a world class operator where
they were willing to overlook my dropping out of university and going to
tech school (Damn fool mistake on my part dropping out).

They were willing to overlook the formal degree and see my experience.
To the interview I brought my patent and a circuit board (assembled)
where I engineered the circuitry as well as designed the PCB. Quite a
complex board too. Having faked my way into the Audio Engineering
Society at one time helped as a credential too.

While you are supposed to have a bachelor's degree to get in I got in by
owning an audio related business and interviewing at the NYC head
office.

Overall, its my dream job and now I'm designing world class products,
been promoted and making more money than ever before in my life.
However, both people who interviewed me were engineers themselves.

If you have to interview with a non tech HR person, you're right, you
never get anywhere without the paperwork. However, I've met a lot of
paper engineers and it takes 10 of them to do what I do.

The difference I think is that most paper engineers are not really "into
it". That is, after work, they go home and don't do any tech stuff
outside of work. Its just a job to them.

Myself, I do sound every month for a show in San Diego and I have a free
schematics web site. The big reason I think I have stopped doing my
projects at home is because I am doing the same projects and sometimes
better ones, at work anyway.

Why build something at home when I can do it at work and be paid for it.
I'm lucky my personal interest parallels what I do at work.


--
Dan Fraser

From Costa Mesa in sunny California
714-420-7535

Check out my electronic schematics site at:
http://www.schematicsforfree.com
If you are into cars check out www.roadsters.com

 

Ah, but the degree shows she 'learned to think'.... That's the excuse I get for the
rationale of the 'bachelor degree for everything' mentality. You, sir, can not think.

Ah, but she photocopied it like only a university graduate can. It was the same story
at my previous employer.

But she could give you the exact convolution matrix of the smearing! Don't you see?

Everyone's an engineer these days. Component engineer just means data entry clerk.
Where I was working before, it was actually kind of sad to see the kids fresh from
university, all excited, start to work as component engineer, it didn't take them too
long to figure out that they're not engineers... Lots of confused kids.
That being said, I'm trying to get in university myself... Resistance is futile.
There's *nothing* out there for two college diplomas. You know, it's not so much the
university experience itself that I have a problem with, it's how the employers use
it, like in your case. Feels like to get any kind of decent job, you need a bachelor's
these days. Massive overkill in most cases.

 

On Sat, 09 Aug 2003 05:13:16 +0100, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

She had a degree

Probably in geography

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, dear Michael
Happy birthday to you!

 

--

Thank you. I forgot to remove that from my sig file.


BTW: The idiot wanted a bigger office so she threw out several
thousand data books, reference books and all the original disks and
manuals for all the design software, just so she could move her desk
into the library.


Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

Definitely geography.

Probablt summa cum laude, too.

 

People wrote, in part.

I agree the best engineer I ever hired (that was when a
group/departmental managers still, in our organization, had a say
in who was chosen!) was an individual who had been the top tech
at a small TV network. A good 'People person' too; he's been
promoted and very roughly now has the same job that I held some
15 years ago before I retired!
I couldn't agree more. When I was a four year student apprentice
about half way through some graduate engineers were placed
alongside us and spent two years sort of 'hands on'. They were a
little older and a little more worldly but it was a good mix.
Come to think of it the second best engineer that I worked with
had grown up on an isolated Scottish farm that depended on a set
of surplus W.W.II ex German U Boat batteries for power; IIRC they
were charged partly by a windmill and partly by an ancient one or
two cylinder engine driving a dynamo via a big leather belt. I
knew what he was talking about cos my uncle's chicken farm had a
similar set up in the early 1940s! Anyway that engineer knew all
about battery voltages and specific gravities at various
temperatures.
Terry.
PS. In another aspect, my wife's career as a commercial caterer,
we found that architects often don't design kitchens that best
suit their purpose/use. But that's another rant for another time.
Ergo all apprentice architects should work as cooks, for a time!