online electronics store

[thehammer12]

Can anyone recommend any online electronic parts stores, similar to radioshack but not ebay ha.

Looking for servos, power switches, LED bulbs, and other random stuff. I lost my bookmark folder filled with the links of different stores so if you guys know any general stores please let me know.

Thanks

[Slippyblade]

Sparkfun has a lot of robotics type stuf.  Mouser is a good source as well.

[MonMotha]

What comes to mind for what I think you're looking for...

Marlin P. Jones & Associates (no, not attorneys at law, though it sounds like it should be): http://www.mpja.com
Jameco Electronics: http://www.jameco.com

Also look for the usual hobbyist sites like Sparkfun, Adafruit, etc.

If you want to be totally overwhelmed with a ton of raw parts available for mostly immediate shipment in small quantity, the usual suspects in the USA are: Digi-Key, Mouser, Newark, and Allied Electronics.

[Louis Tully]

.

[thehammer12]

Wow all of these sites you guys provided had exactly what I was looking for, and even a few cool tutorials.

thanks

[Vigo]

Another good one is http://www.allelectronics.com/

[thehammer12]

Another good one is http://www.allelectronics.com/

Yeah it was, thanks.

[Howard_Casto]

Heh, most of those places charge too much.  I typically use on the of the sites to lookup the parts I need and then get them from the slow boat from China (aka eBay, Dx.com ect)

[thehammer12]

Heh, most of those places charge too much.  I typically use on the of the sites to lookup the parts I need and then get them from the slow boat from China (aka eBay, Dx.com ect)

Sure, but I rather pay full price from a store here in the states then save 10-15 bucks and wait 2 weeks for shipping you know.

[Howard_Casto]

Eh I dunno... shipping is pretty unpredictable when ordering overseas but typically I've never waited more than a week.  Usually it comes within 2 or three days unless it's a really oddball part. 

If I need it any quicker than that I'm going to go to a physical store and buy it anyway (and pay 500% markup   )

[Ken Layton]

Many of the online USA electronic parts companies like Mouser, Jameco, Digi-Key, etc will guarantee genuine components will be supplied. If you order from China, you may be likely to receive counterfeit components.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm not sure what you even mean by counterfeit components.  There's no such thing as a fake resistor, or led ect....  Yeah you might get some defective parts, but that's not the same thing.  Considering they typically cost 1/10th the price that's more than acceptable.  Everything I've ordered has been just fine though... never received a single defective part.  Which is probably because Digi-Key, Rat Shack and the like are all selling the exact same parts from China.  By ordering directly from the source they can be sent without the ridiculous tariff costs and then the equally ridiculous mark up prices from the end retailer. 

I'm all for buying parts made in this country... so as soon as they start actually start making them here and selling them at competitive prices, I'll be proud to order inside the states again. 

[MonMotha]

It's mostly an issue with semiconductors.  Counterfeits range from remarking the manufacturer from some knock-off with questionable quality control to a more reputable manufacturer to remarking part numbers with something that's similar-ish but with wildly differing specs to just flat out lying about what the part is.  There was a major issue a while back with counterfeit Atmel ATmega328 parts (commonly used on the Arduino line) that were actually some random prototype device from ON semiconductor.  The only thing they had in common was the package style and number of leads.  Suffice to say, they did not work in the intended application...

It can be an issue with passives too, though.  Remember the whole electrolytic capacitor issue?  That was caused by some industrial espionage gone wrong, but it was made far worse by the fact that the defective parts were often represented as though they were more reputable brands (Nichicon, Panasonic, Nippon Chemi-con, etc.).  I've also seen wild things like standard film/disc caps being re-marked as X2/Y2 safety rated, which is a major fire and/or shock hazard!

Digi-Key, Mouser, etc. are actual manufacturer authorized reps and buy directly from the manufacturer, not a 3rd party clearinghouse in China (or elsewhere; China is far from the only culprit, here).  This tends to minimize the changes of getting counterfeits, and they'll make things right VERY quickly in the event you do.  There's a reason mostly sourcing people grumble when they have to resort to buying from 3rd party clearinghouses overseas, and there's also a reason why design engineers grumble when CMs in China "tweak" the bill of materials to "use locally available parts".

Regarding buying parts made in the USA, I'm not even sure you can buy resistors made in the USA at this point.  Probably some niche application ones, I guess.  What matters is the control the distributor exerts over their sourcing chain.  The part may be made overseas, but you have high confidence that the part is exactly what it's being represented to be.  This is rarely the case with buying off e.g. eBay (then again, they rarely even bother to tell you who the manufacturer is in the first place).

[Howard_Casto]

Well I mean I keep hearing people say that, and yet I've never had a bad experience buying parts that way. 

I'm not saying that in rare instances this doesn't happen, but I believe it's another one of those deals where if someone tells a "lie" enough times people take it as the truth. 

In terms of AVRs and the like yes they are definitely counterfeit, because the designs are usually copyrighted.  I thought everybody knew that at this point.  Then again, if I'm trying to do something cheaply a 5 dollar "fake" is preferable to the 55 dollar original. 

[MonMotha]

You actually cannot copyright IC (or PCB) designs.  You can patent some aspects of them.  The issue at hand here is actually TRADEMARK infringement, though: unscrupulous 3rd parties marking bad parts with the name/logo of reputable manufacturers and using their good will to hawk defective, incorrect, or marginal components.

The key is that, while Digi-Key, Mouser, etc. sell the "same parts from China", they're exerting much more control over their sourcing chain so that they can be sure that the parts they are selling have gone through all the proper checks and are the genuine article and that the parts have been properly handled the whole way.  Yes, you pay extra for that service.  If you were buying $1M worth of parts per year, you could go direct with the manufacturer and do it yourself to avoid that extra charge.  As a hobbyist, you may or may not care.

There's certainly no doubt that much of these basic parts can be had way cheaper direct from China.  Honestly, I'm not even sure how they can afford it.  I usually can't even send a bubble mailer across town for the price of what some of these guys will send me a bag of parts from China for.

It's all about determining how important things are to you and how likely you are to get burned.  For very generalized parts where you don't care about any of the secondary characteristics, you may find it appropriate to buy no-pedigree parts off eBay.  For fancy semiconductors, it may be best to seek a manufacturer authorized distributor so that you get a known genuine article.  A bare AVR, for example, is not particularly expensive from Mouser.  They're like $5 (varies with exact P/N), typically, not $50.

[Ken Layton]

I have personally received & experienced counterfeit components: electrolytic capacitors, horizontal output transistors, 6532 IC's (used in Gottlieb pinball machines).

I had purchased several 10 uf @ 500 volt axial electrolytics from my local electronics parts jobber which turned out to be counterfeit. They buy the capacitors from Nichicon, Panasonic, Vishay/Dale, and Jacques Ebert Associates. When I installed these capacitors in a 65-year-old tube amplifier I was restoring for a friend, they almost immediately exploded upon power on. Even though these capacitors were labeled "Made in the USA" on the wrapper, we tore the capacitor apart and found a smaller "Nichicon" brand inside this capacitor's case! The smaller one was rated for 250 volts. We believe the counterfeit capacitors came in from Jacques Ebert and contacted them about it. This is unusual because I have purchased many Jacques Ebert brand capacitors over the years and never had a problem.

I also had some counterfeit 6532 IC's a friend bought 50 of them on ebay from China. Every one was counterfeit. You could see where the original number was ground off and a new number stamped on instead. I tried these in Gottlieb pinball cpu boards and none of them would boot up with these particular "6532" chips. I had the dig though another friend's stash of new old stock 6532's and those worked great.

[kahlid74]

Well I mean I keep hearing people say that, and yet I've never had a bad experience buying parts that way. 

I'm not saying that in rare instances this doesn't happen, but I believe it's another one of those deals where if someone tells a "lie" enough times people take it as the truth. 

In terms of AVRs and the like yes they are definitely counterfeit, because the designs are usually copyrighted.  I thought everybody knew that at this point.  Then again, if I'm trying to do something cheaply a 5 dollar "fake" is preferable to the 55 dollar original.

I bought a boat load of capacitors for a Creative Gigaworks power board through ebay at a fraction of the cost.  Replaced the cheap CapXon capacitors that were on the board in the first place.  The new Chinese ones lasted 15 minutes and then the board would shut down.  After a couple of uses two of the big 470uF capacitors began to swell.  Come to find out the ones I bought, which were "Supposed" to be good quality were not.  Talked to the guy who has repaired several of these gigaworks boards in Malaysia and he tells me go Digikey/Mouser.  I buy the capacitors from Digikey/Mouser and they work flawlessly.

Now LEDs?  F yeah, every strand of LED's I buy from China has been rock solid.  So maybe it's just capacitors?

Chinese capacitors on Ebay - $9 bucks with $10 for shipping
Digikey/Mouser supplied Capacitors - $55 with $15 in shipping

The price difference is huge but so is the quality.  Waited ~2 weeks for the Chinese parts.  Waited two days for the Digikey/Mouser parts.

[SavannahLion]

Worth a read I guess.
http://www.aeri.com/detection-of-counterfeit/
http://www.calce.umd.edu/

It was mentioned earlier about the fake 328's. Here is the source of that. Sparkfun, Part 1, 2 and 3.
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/350
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/364
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/395
I don't know of any other source for that. I don't generally buy any low level components from Spark as they charge quite a bit more, even considering shipping, for their parts.

[Ken Layton]

I have used Hosfelt Electronics and they've had a good selection of electronic supplies:

http://www.hosfelt.com/

[spoot]

http://www.mcmelectronics.com/ has some interesting stuff too.

[Howard_Casto]

Well I mean I keep hearing people say that, and yet I've never had a bad experience buying parts that way. 

I'm not saying that in rare instances this doesn't happen, but I believe it's another one of those deals where if someone tells a "lie" enough times people take it as the truth. 

In terms of AVRs and the like yes they are definitely counterfeit, because the designs are usually copyrighted.  I thought everybody knew that at this point.  Then again, if I'm trying to do something cheaply a 5 dollar "fake" is preferable to the 55 dollar original.

I bought a boat load of capacitors for a Creative Gigaworks power board through ebay at a fraction of the cost.  Replaced the cheap CapXon capacitors that were on the board in the first place.  The new Chinese ones lasted 15 minutes and then the board would shut down.  After a couple of uses two of the big 470uF capacitors began to swell.  Come to find out the ones I bought, which were "Supposed" to be good quality were not.  Talked to the guy who has repaired several of these gigaworks boards in Malaysia and he tells me go Digikey/Mouser.  I buy the capacitors from Digikey/Mouser and they work flawlessly.

Now LEDs?  F yeah, every strand of LED's I buy from China has been rock solid.  So maybe it's just capacitors?

Chinese capacitors on Ebay - $9 bucks with $10 for shipping
Digikey/Mouser supplied Capacitors - $55 with $15 in shipping

The price difference is huge but so is the quality.  Waited ~2 weeks for the Chinese parts.  Waited two days for the Digikey/Mouser parts.

Oh yeah, never buy caps from a no-name marketplace.  I apologize that I didn't mention that.  I HAVE had issues with caps and ONLY caps.  Only the larger ones at that.  This is less of a China/EBay vs reputable dealer issue and more of a quality control one.  All caps from any retailer are crap anymore, but places like digikey and rat-shack are pretty good about inspecting/testing the parts they get in and sending back the obviously defective ones. 

I mentioned in another thread to avoid spending a lot of money on a new tv because they don't last long anymore.  They don't last long due to defective caps. 

[SavannahLion]

I mentioned in another thread to avoid spending a lot of money on a new tv because they don't last long anymore.  They don't last long due to defective caps.

Which I find especially humorous. If you take the average life span of a CRT in 1985 (about 25 years or longer? give or take?) and factor in the costs of use and repair, factor in inflation, then the environmentalists outcry of pollution (toxic metals, energy consumption, whatever). Take all of that into account then compare it to the flat panels in the last ten years or so. The cost of manufacturing, shipping, use for what... 1 to maybe 5 years, if you're lucky? cost of replacement, cost of recycling (if ever), transportation, eWaste fees, the pollution from all of that (which, strangely, the environmentalists never seem to complain about). Not sure if we should as well factor in the fact that the average home has like what? Five or six times the number of viewing screens they did in 1985?

Yeah, a lot of crap getting churned through and I haven't actually seen a single top to bottom study that addresses that. Interesting oversight if you ask me.

[Ken Layton]

Mendelson Electronics:

http://www.meci.com/