Today was the day that the Robotshop was meant to get delivery of my motors. Lunch time still showed out of stock. After lunch they showed as out of stock and another month delay. So a wrote a restrained but firm email to customer support at 4pm.Got an answer by 7pm. I have to say they have great customer support, always answer really fast! Apparently that was an error and they have received my parts and they will be in the post tomorrow. Woohoo!

With my Christmas presents (tools) I finally look like being able to start work in earnest when the bits arrived. I also ordered some small aluminium sheets for making smaller custom parts and I will use one as a mock-up for the base, and tweak that design before making the base form something harder.

When I first saw the stock error I had another look for alternative parts and suppliers. As you saw in another thread I did see some on ebay with encoders but I also located a company in Italy - not sure if anyone has dealt with them before StepLab - shipping to UK is around €17.50 for express up to 5kg - English website is a bit unstable and incomplete but Italian looks good. Motori, Planetari, you get the idea. For slow post and no tracking its a lot less. I may order my next lot from there.