Wolf’s Junkyard

There’s a wealth of places to find raw materials and components in Singapore, if you know where to look.  Not many shops here have a huge online presence, so often you’ll need to make a physical trip down to get what you want.

Electronics

Sim Lim Tower
10 Jalan Besar
Singapore 208787

Too many electronics shops to count! Mostly concentrated in the basement and on the third floor. One of the more interesting shops is Kaichin Industrial on the third floor, with a wide selection of salvaged parts from industrial machines, eg stepper motors (floppies to NEMA23s and above), linear stages, etc.

RS Components Singapore
Farnell Singapore
Online electronics suppliers for the not-so-common components like AVR chips and kits.  RS also has a selection of hardware tools and stock.

Tools and Hardware

Homely Hardware
Ubi/Changi/Jurong/Toh Guan locations
Power tools, hand tools, taps, dies, drill bits, nuts, bolts, adhesives, paints…

Acrylic and other plastics

Acrylic Centre
Bras Basah Complex,
Blk 231 Bain Street #02-99
Singapore 180231
Tel: 6382 3232

For ready made acrylic things like cases.

Dama Enterprises
Blk 3029-A
Ubi Road 3, 01-98/99
Singapore 408661
Tel: 6743 6100

For acrylic, PC and PVC stock. They provide a cutting service as well.

Metal stock

Kelantan Road & Kelantan Lane
A number of shops in the area sell aluminium/copper/iron/brass rods/sheets, as well as nuts, bolts and screws of various sizes.

Ubi Industrial Estate
A number of shops sell aluminium, iron and steel stock in this area.

Wood

Sungei Kadut Industrial Estate
All the wood suppliers in Singapore seem to be concentrated in this area.

Fabric

Arab Street
Lots of fabric shops, although most deal only with cotton and silk.  Gim Joo Textile (90 Arab Street) sells pleather and other usual fabrics however.

Other Stuff

Daiso
IMM/VivoCity/Plaza Singapura
Daiso has practically everything. Well, almost. Wood blocks, MDF, engraving bits, cutting knives, polymer clay, velcro, nichrome wire for building your own foam cutters…

Sundry Stores
Nearly every major HDB residential estate has at least a sundry store. While their selection varies with location, phase of the moon, and so on, they’re generally a good place to look for things such as cheap laser pointers, interchangeable tool driver sets (with Torx and other weirder bits), POV minifans, radios, stopwatches and other household electronics products.

Junk

Just cruise around HDB void decks and landed housing residential areas.  Singaporeans have a habit of upgrading their consumer electronics frequently (and unnecessarily, but just because they need to have the latest whatever), so it’s often trivial to pick up thrown-out computers, printers, toys, golf bags and other things.  You only need to get there before the karang guni guy does.