We have a lot of equipment and parts still to be posted to our site, which is a time consuming process given our limited staff.
Instead of making everyone wait for those items to be listed (although, you are free to do so), you can find a list of our verified equipment here: Price List – Verified Equipment.
This is a list, including prices, of all the equipment we have in stock that has been verified and tested as OK by Walter II prior to his passing. This means that this equipment received an inspection by him, and has an “OK” sticker (unless otherwise indicated in the price list).
We will continue updating our online inventory with this equipment, but you can get a head start on it now!
We are also discounting all of our Parts in Tubes by 50% – which will end on 31 October, 2024! These parts will disappear forever after that.
Until the end of November, all of our Tektronix 500 series mainframes are on sale, at the end of that these frames will no longer be available. Conditions of these frames vary, but we are treating all of the base frames as “parts” units.
Prices and current stock levels are as follows:
We do have certain 500 series frames listed that have modules in them, and we will be adding more to the site in the near future.
Looking for a fixed output power supply, but just weren’t sure if you could swing the amperage?
Not to worry! We’ve lowered the prices on all of our fixed output power supplies, and they are now all below $25.
We’ve just listed an Efratom GPS time standard unit from Efratom, which includes the control module, GPS receiver, and onboard correction modules in one convenient rackmount frame. When set up correctly, this unit effectively replicates the accuracy of a cesium clock.
Very important for those of you that need anything calibrated, or if you just want to be very specifically on time for something.
Our final Stuff Event has come to a close, and we thank all of our customers that were able to find something useful. We will continue to have the following items on sale until our inventory runs out:
For this week only, we will also offer the following discount (ends 15/09/2024):
Do you need diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc? Things that come in large quantities and are found on a reel?
We’re discounting all of our parts reels to $3 per reel for the next week and a half! We’re making them available by part type only, not specific value (i.e. you can order a reel of diodes, but not necessarily a reel of 1N4007 diodes – we’ll send out whatever we have until there’s nothing left in stock).
Contact Susan (susan@okanagan.net) to request parts reels, and identify the part type you are interested in.
From 26 August, to 8 September, we will have a 25% discount on items listed on our website, excluding slide rules.
This is a great opportunity to get that rare piece of test equipment, hard-to-find spare parts, or other item you’ve been holding off on getting.
We are continuing to prepare for our final Stuff Event, which will kick off on 26 August, and run until the end of the first week of September (8 September).
Mark your calendars! Tell your friends, your neighbors, and anyone that looks to be suffering from existential ennui!
While we will be closing our main operations at the end of 2024, the Slide Rule Universe will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.
Not only are we getting ready for final Stuff Event (last week of August, and first week of September – mark your calendar!), but we are listing the very last of our CRT inventory.
These are primarily HP CRTs, and are heavily discounted! Have a look here.
Our CRTs are only going to be available until the end of August, so this is the last chance to pick up ultra-rare replacement parts!
Sphere Research will be holding its Final Stuff Event from 26 August, to 08 September. During this period we welcome everyone to stop by, and load up on our vast array of surplus equipment, test equipment, tools, and rare spare parts.
This will be the last ever Stuff Event that Sphere Research holds, as we prepare to close our doors at the end of 2024.
Please do contact us directly to book a visit, or if you are looking for something specific!
We will be back and answering e-mails regularly towards the middle of August. Sometimes health problems are more stubborn than they should be.
Send good wishes, and maybe spare penicillin?
We’re hoping to be back in the office by July 19th, and we very much appreciate your patience!
We hope all of our customers are enjoying the summer weather and doing well!
We’re going to be away from the office for a short while due to medical reasons, so we may be slow getting back to you.
The office should be open again by July 8th, and you shouldn’t have to wait too long for any orders after that.
We’ve added new categories for Power Supplies and Test Equipment to make it easier to find items that used to be lumped into Other Equipment.
Sphere will be attending the PACE Penticton Electronics Swap/Recycling event on the 17th of March. We’ll be there with several tables loaded with tools, scopes, RF equipment, and other odds and ends looking for a new home!
Hope to see many of you there!
The Stuff Day event held on Saturday, 24 February, was quite a success, and we appreciate all of the assistance that a number of people provided to help us get organized. A particularly big thanks to Chris Walter who helped us clear out and organize the entire workshop!
There is a recycling/swap meet event coming up in Penticton, on 17 March, and we will be brining a variety of tools and equipment to share with the community.
What makes this tomorrow’s Stuff Day so different? You be the judge from the photos. We’ve got equipment, parts, tools, and oddities all sorted, priced and looking for a new home!
This is only a fraction of what’s available, you’ll have to come out to see the rest!
See you all tomorrow (Saturday, 24 Feb, 2024), 10am – 3pm.
A big thanks to our customer Steve who gave us a whole bunch of information on our microscopes, and microscope accessories that had been incorrectly labeled/marked.
We are continually adding to the site on a daily basis, and you will occasionally see new categories added for different types of parts.
Posts are a bit more sparse as we’re currently busy getting ready for the our Stuff Day coming up on Saturday, 24 February. There is all kinds of new and obscure hardware that we’ve found, not all of which is going to make it on to the website before Stuff Day arrives, so there’s a very high chance of finding some very unusual trinkets here next Saturday!
We’ve added a new parts section for fans as we continue to add to the huge collection of fans in our inventory. These fans have been discounted, and many are available with bulk discounts!
Don’t forget to mark your calendars for the Stuff Day on 24 February!
With no end to all the parts we keep discovering as we go through our inventory, there’s only one thing to do…
STUFF DAY! The not-quite Valentine’s, not-quite-spring-break, edition. We’re holding a Stuff Day on 24 February, 2024, details as per the below poster! All kinds of new and strange things as we’ve been clearing out storage lockers to find items that have never been listed previously!
Prepare to be adequately convenienced! We now have an auto-updating page of Recently Added items (button #4 on the page header).
This page automatically updates with the items added to the site in the last 7 days, and is divided into “stuff” and “slide rules”. Hopefully this will save everyone time of having to look across the various sub pages to find the new items that have been added.
We’ve now uploaded a very large selection of assorted microscope parts, optics, and other components.
We’ve started cataloguing and listing our various microscopes and optics, which you can find here under the Optics page. At the moment you’ll find mostly our microscopes, but we will shortly be adding all of the small optical bits and bobs that we are still working on sorting through.
Not wanting to neglect the slide rule fans, we’ve also added more to the various pages, particularly in the On Sale section.
We’ve got more news coming shortly!
We’ve an assortment of new parts to the discount bins (primarily $5 and $10), as well as adding a variety of new Tektronix equipment – some are good and ready to use, some are only suitable for parts.
We’ve added some more Tektronix equipment today, as well as a number of items to the discount bins and Other Equipment sections. Some of the highlights: We’ve added some nice General Radio Decade Resistors.
We’ve just added another huge batch of rules to the various pages, of particular interest are the K&E Deci-Lons. We’ve only got 4 of those rules left!
Today is Faber Castell 2/83N launch day!
Our remaining stock of these rules is now listed, and discounted. They have been sorted into different classes based on scale bleeding and case quality. We’ve also separated them out by case color, so you can now view what we have in terms of remaining stock for both green and brown cases.
Get them while they last! These babies haven’t been produced in over 50 years, and they are as rare as hen’s teeth.
There are also a number of additions to the various discount bins!
We’ve been spending the last few weeks cleaning out a lot of our slide rule inventory. This has meant a lot of previously unlisted, ultra-rare, or highly unusual rules are now being posted online (fresh batch posted today – make sure to check the Other Rules, Hemmi, and Faber Castell pages).
It has also meant that we’ve started looking at what sort of rules we can put together out of existing parts stock – namely the most coveted rule: The Faber Castell 2/83N.
In a few days we’ll be posting a number of these for sale based on what we’ve found in various storage locations, tiered by rule/box/case quality, and we’ll be making them available at different price points. Keep your eyes peeled, because we have a very small number of these rules, and we’ll be listing them at discounted prices.
We’ve added a variety of new parts and items that you can find in the various discount bins, as well as a Biddle Instruments AC High Pot Tester (see Other Equipment).
Stay tuned for some big news related to slide rules, we’ve been doing a lot of cleaning and sorting in our slide rule store room, and we’ll be posting some of the hidden gems we turned up soon!
We’ve just listed some more items to the Tools, Parts, and Other Equipment pages – items listed include a variety of RF relays/coaxial switches, and a very rare GenRad 1867B Digibridge!
We’ve added a number of new parts that you’ll find by looking in either the discount bins, or the Parts page. We’ll also have more books and slide rules going up later this week.
We’ve just added a new section under the Slide Rules category for books. This includes some very rare, and very old, manuals on using slide rules, as well as historical product catalogs from K&E and Dietzgen.
We’ve added an entire page for the growing amount of FLUKE DMMs and probes that’s we’ve got listed, so make sure to check that out!
There are also a number of additions to the Other Equipment and various discount bin pages.
We’ve added a number of new items on the Other Equipment and Probes pages, as well as to some of the Discount Bin pages. The majority of the new items are assorted DMMs and other electrical measuring tools, as well as some new probes.
Backend maintenance on our site has been completed, which hopefully will make the site easier to navigate. Some of the changes we have made:
Sphere Research Corporation