Material Vendors

Composites / Mold making 

• Reynolds Advance Materials - the Project Lab's preferred vendor. Start kits and supplies. 

• Eager Polymers - is your one-stop source for all mold-making and casting projects. You will find that our Web Site is the most comprehensive in the industry, filled with hundreds of pages of How-To information, technical data sheets, and helpful hints.   Double check with a projectlab/fablab specialist before getting anything from here. Make sure that it is ok to use materials in the labs. 

• Smooth-On - variety of casting material, great introduction videos and tutorials 

• Freeman Supply - mold making supplies and composite materials. Great for CNC stock material. 

Electronics/ Tech

• Adafruit.com - all things nerdy and tech related. LED's, stepper motors, Arduino's, rasberry pi's, instructional kits, robots, 3D printers, CNC, etc...

• SparkFun Electronics - Similar to Adafruit.com, not as user-friendly but normally cheaper, not as reliable of parts as adafruit. 

• Seeedstudio.com - Similar to the previous two, except more variety in buttons, and basic components. 

• American Science and Surplus - American Science & Surplus offers science kits, educational toys, school supplies, arts and crafts items, hobby tools, scales, lab glass, housewares, electronics.

• Micro Center - Local, great for electronic parts and lights 

Foam

• Home Depot - Pink Styrene foam, great for CNC and prototyping. 

• Hot Wire Foam Company - Wide variety of quality high density foams

• Lance Construction - Blue Styrene foam, for use in Project Lab only. 

Industrial supply

• McMaster-Carr - Everything from hardware to cleaning supplies

• Grainger - Industrial supplies, hand tools, everything

• Inventables - Hardware store for designers,

Laser Cut Materials

• • Woodpecker - Laser cut materials, bulk dowels

  • Maker Stock - Laser cut materials

Paint + Supplies

• Momentum art tech - best place to buy spray paint in the city of Chicago. It is off of the oak park blue line, be sure to check their hours online before going.

• Blick Art Materials 

• Midwest Airbrush  - Airbrush supplies as well as model paint.

• Aselart - small art store in Dallas, Texas that specializes in high end canvas and model paint. 

• JC Licht - great for painting supplies, paint, and glue. Blocks from UIC campus. 

• Schauer Hardware - Forrest Park hardware store with spray paint

Paper/ Sticker paper

• French Paper Company

• Lewis 

• Sticker Companies 

  • • stickerobot.com - High-quality Vinyl stickers, they produce supreme and obey's stickers.

    • Stickerapp.com - Similar to Stickerobot.com, high-quality vinyl stickers. Plus side about them is you can print min 25 stickers and they deliver within a week. 

    • eggshell - Extremely hard to remove outdoor stickers. - Custom screen printed from vector art. 

    • Machineartshop.com - High-quality vinyl stickers with artwork screen printed by hand. High print volume for a cheap price. You can print 500 2" x 2" stickers for $35 dollars ($45 with shipping included). 

Salvaged

• Rebuilding Exchange , Do not use anything from here in the shop or fablab without first checking with Alex, Christian or Jacob. Everything here is salvaged meaning that there will most likely still be nails, screws, stain, etc.. still in material.