Electronic parts

hwinther

New Member
Most of the parts that I need for my projects are available at tech-supplies, and both the prices and shipping price+time is decent concidering that I live in Norway.
However there are times when I could need a package of a specific item, in this case I'm looking at the hardware "shopping list" for kranenborg's network system, and either I'm lacking the knowledge of intercompability with the items techsupplies supplies, or I cant find this particular item at all.

So on to the actual question; could someone give me a hint as to where I might find "most things" online just by the serial number (e.g. IRF9540N)?

Again; everything I can purchase from techsupplies, I do - even if its more expensive (hasn't happened), then I would still get it there instead in order to support the development of the great PICAXE chips :)
 

hax

New Member
This is a huge area. I wish I could name just one store that did everything right, and had everything you wanted... and had good shipping rates... The answer is that it all depends.

Here are my main suppliers with a comment on each one: (keeping in mind I am in Australia)

www.futurlec.com
A Taiwanese company that stocks stuff dirt cheap, and does not charge too much for shipping all over the world. Orders sometimes go missing, but worth it in the long run.

www.farnell.com
A global company that stocks everything, but does charge a fair bit for shipping, and component prices are expensive.

www.oatleyelectronics.com.au
Australian company that stocks one-off lines that may or may not disappear once depleted. Great for bargain hunters for all sorts of components and motors. Excellent bargain corner website. (dont know about international shipping)

www.sparkfun.com
A great US company that is truly fantastic for new technology items such as GPS modules, LCD screens, GSM modules, and many good quality well known parts. Shipping (to Australia) is ridiculously cheap. They charged me $3.80 shipping for my last order!!

www.jaycar.com.au
Good within Australia, but you might find a similar store in your country. Not too much of a range of parts, but you will find 90% of your components from them. If you frequently order in the hundreds of dollars mark, you should start an account with www.electusdistribution.com.au Same stock as jaycar but wholesale pricing. (great for schools)
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Same problem in the UK. Where Rev-Ed do not stock I usually look in the direction of http://www.rapidonline.com/ then http://www.farnell.com and www.maplin.co.uk. Maplins are unfortunately, for the electronic hobbyist, a poor shadow of their former selves.

There's always RS Components ( http://www.rswww.com ), but they used to have higher costs and only dealt with businesses ( if that's changed please let us all know ! )

For one-off's shipping costs can be prohbitive, and it's often a hard job finding one supplier who stocks everything to minimise costs.
 

Dippy

Moderator
I've just checked RS. Non-account holders are Cash With order.
But why not get an account? You'll need references.
In UK you get free carriage and tech support.

Here's the link for RS in Norway
http://www.rsonline.no/cgi-bin/bv/rswww/home.do?cacheID=noie&returningUser=N


Here is Farnell in Norway.
http://no.farnell.com/jsp/home/homepage.jsp
(Certainly farnell UK take credit cards or you can open an account)


Both of the above can be pricier than competitors, but they will normally get the product out to you next-working-day. If you can wait a week to save 10% then buy elsewhere.
And both have an enormous stock of all sorts of doo-dahs.

I'll go along with hippys suggestions except we don't bother with Maplin as they are mostly a Toy store now.
 

Michael 2727

Senior Member
In Australia we also have RS Components-
http://www.rsaustralia.com/cgi-bin/bv/rswww/home.do?cacheID=auie&returningUser=N
And as said they are expensive, in some cases very, but they stock everything.
(have a Cattledog thicker than a phone book of stocked parts)
In OZ they will sell small orders, e.g. 4 chips.
(I did use a business name though)
Online orders. Good service, 1800 Phone order line.

There is also Rockby Electronic Components, Melbourne, Huntingdale -
http://www.rockby.com.au/
They sell New and Surplus components, their range is fairly good
and they have very interesting 1 OFF Madness Sales on limited items
at crazy prices. Good online, no fuss service.

And Altronics-
http://www.altronics.com.au/
WA based but overnight delivery to east coast depots.
They say they can do Canada, USA and NZ, PNG also.
Similar range to Jaycar
Good service.
 

Dippy

Moderator
Michael, apart from RS obviously do any of your links deliver to Norway?
That's where hwinther lives.

hwinther: try the Farnell link and put your example device description in Farnell search box.
 

blauer

Member
Nordic electronics part supplier

www.elfa.se

There can even be ELFA shop near you. ;) They do have IRFxxxx plus tons of others.
ELFA is the place where i order most frequently.

Just visited ELFAs english page. They are looking for resellers.... Will there be ELFA in Austaralia soon?
 
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hwinther

New Member
Great, I'll try farnell first and rapidonline seems to be a good alternative.. the reason I'm not using elfa is just that I buy in so small amounts its not meant to be a good long-term solution for getting parts.. thanks for the suggestions though, everyone :)
I would have explicitly asked for a store in europe but I didnt find other posts about this topic on the forum, so I thought it might be a good to have a wide variety of locations for when other people find this thread in the future..
 

manuka

Senior Member
e-parts!

Every country surely has it's bargain e-parts suppliers, & given thin profit margins these typically don't advertise widely. Ask around ! Here in NZ the likes of educationally orientated Surplustronics (=> www.surplustronics.co.nz ) & Mailtronics (=> www.mailtronicsnz.com/schoolcat/education.htm) have prices typically just half those of Jaycar & DSE. In Oz. also consider Altronics & Oatley (Google for sites). I've been a great fan of the US Electronic Goldmine crowd (=> www.goldmine-elec.com/) for larger orders.

Of course the BIG issue now relates to often staggering p&p, which may serve to squash otherwise attractively priced orders. Oh for the days of my youth when UK-NZ sea mail (although dead slow) freighting costs were only small change in relation to the e-parts! A few "5 bob BPOs (British Postal Orders)" could cover enough goodies to keep me happy for weeks. I'm certainly showing my age here...

One modern p&p pain reliever may be that foreign sales are often tax exempt BOTH ends. Hence orders I make directly to Rev.Ed are exported UK 17½% VAT exempt, & arrive here in NZ exempt our 12½% GST (if the order total < NZ$400). Naturally you wouldn't order a 1k resistor like this, but for volume needs, perhaps a tube of 50 x 08Ms shared with local mates, this can be very cost effective. Stan
 
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BrendanP

Senior Member
Jaycar are a crap amatuer hour company who charge rip off prices in my view and sell a very narrow range of parts along with a heap of rubbish . Futurlec isnt bad on price but I notice their stuff isnt packed with ESD measures in mind when it comes. Jaycar and Altronics are both guilty of this. ESD damage is a worry because just becasue the part doesnt fail imediately dosent mean it hasnt been damaged. It might fail months latter becasue some counter jockey has gotten it out and zapped it after walking on carpet.

The best by far of all of them is Mouser in Texas. Its rare I can't find a part there. They charge $12 US to deliver a package weighing a pound to Australia by USPS. And they are cheaper than Australian suppliers plus you dont pay GST on orders under $1000.

Ive found parts/soloutions to problems in the Mouser catalogue that I didnt even know existed.

Australian suppliers will gouge you like hell if you only want to buy a couple of parts for experimenting with, and usually theyll say 'we wont have it for a weeks' if its an odd part. Mouser will Fed EX it here in three days for $40 if Im in a rush for it. I can't speak highly enough of Mouser.
 

Tom2000

Senior Member
Of course the BIG issue now relates to often staggering p&p, which may serve to squash otherwise attractively priced orders. Oh for the days of my youth when UK-NZ sea mail (although dead slow) freighting costs were only small change in relation to the e-parts! A few "5 bob BPOs (British Postal Orders)" could cover enough goodies to keep me happy for weeks. I'm certainly showing my age here...
"Truer words were never spoken..."

I agree, Stan. Shipping is a killer. When I order parts, I try to add on enough useful parts to reduce the per-part shipping costs. It's a good way to build up my parts supply.

Unfortunately, the extra parts I buy never seem to be the ones I need for my next project! No matter how much I have on hand, I always seem to need one or two parts that I can't design around. The result is a bunch of parts that I'll probably never use.

So, buying those few parts I need for my current project involves buying extra parts that won't be the right ones for my next project... etc :)

I wish there was some sort of local electronic hobby club where we could swap parts, the same way a local sports car club worked when I was restoring a car.

As far as vendors go, I've had excellent results from Mouser, who is my first choice, and the rest of the major US vendors. For surplus, I'm happy with Electronic Goldmine and All Electronics. I even tried an order with Futurelec, with good prices and a lot of hard-to-find discontinued parts, but long shipping time to the US.

I think that, these days, knowing how to find parts is as important as being able to use those parts, at least for the hobbyist. I wish I was better at it.

Tom
 
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inglewoodpete

Senior Member
Brendan raised a couple of points.

ESD is a problem and, from being an over-the-counter customer of Altronics and Jaycar, I'd say that training (call it ignorance) is the culprit here. While I have never had an ESD sensitive component from these retailers fail, I have seen the 2 opposites in handling these devices. On 1 hand, there's the 17 or 18 year-old who can barely recognise components let alone the ESD sensitive ones or know how to handle them. On the other hand, I had to return a PICAXE 28A supplied instead of the 28X I paid for. In this case, the assistant did not want to take the chip out of the ESD envelope so I could prove it was the wrong chip!

The companies are loosely criticised as amateur and high priced. Taken in their context, they are basically retailers ('electronics supermarkets') to hobbyists. The market is small in Australia (Pop. 20M). Every square metre of retail and wharehouse floorspace must pay for itself. Because they are local and handy to get to, I buy 95% of my electronics from them. Sure, its annoying when I have to go elsewhere, even overseas, to get relatively common semiconductors. Howeven, I'm glad that Altronics supply PICAXE chips, even if it is at a premium price.
 

demonicpicaxeguy

Senior Member
some of the jaycar stores are getting worse i've noticed,
last time i went shopping there i asked for 3 X pic16f88's got handed 2 pic16f88's and an atmel chip :( when i pointed it out, the attendant insisted the atmel chip was a pic16f88,
the writing on the chip was badily worn off but still readable
needless to say i goto dick smith often enough to get a staff discount or i order directly from microchip
 

BrendanP

Senior Member
I realise these shop front places have their advantages, and I agree it is simply a lack of training that causes the staff to make mistakes. It isn't their fault if it has never been explained to them. I certainly wouldn't use any part supplied by these places in any piece of equipment I was going to on sell. The ESD damage issue is, in my view, just too much of risk.

Another option if you want a larger quatity of parts are sites like Ho Bid. You put up what you want and how much you'll pay and people reply. I needed sim card holders and molex connectors, I couldnt get them any where but found 50 of each via Ho Bid.


Another great source is Amazon for books. I don't even bother trying with Australian book sellers. Amazon will have it for sure at a far lower price and get it to me much quicker.
 

ljg

New Member
Two places I haven't seen mentioned are
digikey
for components, and Powell's books

Both will ship anywhere, (though you might get nicked up a bit with shipping to Norway)

Digikey has what I have found to be the most complete component selection. you can search by part description or part #.

Powell's lays claim to be the largest independent bookstore in the world, selling both used and new titles. They will also seek out titles and notify you when they get one. A pretty large percentage of Amazon Titles actually come out of Powell's warehouses.

If you ever make it to Portland OR, visit their techical store- nothing but geek titles. I spend a couple hours a week in there.
 

BrendanP

Senior Member
Digikey will only ship fed ex or ups ( can't remember which) to Australia which is significantly more costly than USPS.
 

jmumby

Senior Member
Every country surely has it's bargain e-parts suppliers, & given thin profit margins these typically don't advertise widely. Ask around ! Here in NZ the likes of educationally orientated Surplustronics (=> www.surplustronics.co.nz ) & Mailtronics (=> www.mailtronicsnz.com/schoolcat/education.htm) have prices typically just half those of Jaycar & DSE. In Oz. also consider Altronics & Oatley (Google for sites). I've been a great fan of the US Electronic Goldmine crowd (=> www.goldmine-elec.com/) for larger orders.
South Island Components sicom.co.nz are usually cheaper than surplustronics but if your mailing to Wellington then it could be marginal. I am a sparkfun fan usually get my stuff in a few days for a couple of dollars. Most other places (like aus) will charge you typically more than your purchase for shipping.

I was thinking of making a online store so I could supply the oddball stuff that you just can't dream of getting here like oled screens, trackballs, gyros dos on chip etc etc but I doupt there is a market for it here.
 
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