Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[dave]

When you think about it the chip is  cheap. Consider instead how much 
time/$$$ you are going
to have to invest in software to configure that many gates. Scary to 
even think about.
It is little wonder that NSA, etc may be the only ones using that chip.

Jon- a whole board covered with those chips would have impressive 
computing power. :-)
And indeed a knee quivering price. Serious case of sewing machine knee.

dave

On 01/31/2016 07:41 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> On 01/31/2016 06:34 PM, Leonardo Marsaglia wrote:
>> A question about pricing on FPGAs, and just out of my curiosity. Why is it
>> the most expensive ones cost over 50k dolars? I know they have great
>> paralelism capabilities and a lot of IOs but god those are expensive!
>>
>>
> Well, seems their only customer is the NSA for some
> supersecret code-cracking machine, and they apparently will
> pay for such devices.  The really BIG FPGAs are huge amounts
> of configurable logic.  You can probably fit 100 old 370
> computers in there and run them at 10X the original clock speed.
>
> Possibly these also get used for simulation of chip designs
> and such stuff.  But, obviously the market for a $50K chip
> must be QUITE narrow.  And, thinking of a whole board
> covered in these chips makes my knees start quivering.
>
> I use the $13 Xilinx Spartan 3A  50 and think it is just
> great! Smallest of the family, but plenty of resources for me.
>
> Jon
>
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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me (OT warning)

[TJoseph Powderly]

nicklas
hahaha i understand very well
but dont be sour
all women love you.r money
as they say here in thailand ;-)
tomp

On 02/02/2016 01:16 AM, Nicklas Karlsson wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 08:27:42 -0800
> Steve Traugott  wrote:
>
>> Interesting.  My wife and I run an electronics manufacturing business. ...
> Interesting wife and business seems exciting. One of my teachers once asked 
> why women prefer gold it does not corrode but I answered it's because gold is 
> expensive and he thought it was very funny. I guess the only thing worse 
> would be wife in combination with Chinese.
>


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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 02/01/2016 12:33 PM, andy pugh wrote:
> On 1 February 2016 at 18:02, Dave Cole  wrote:
>> I'd still like to understand how China goods can be shipping and
>> imported into the US for virtually free, but I can't ship the same item
>> across the country for anything close to the same cost.
>> If anyone knows, please enlighten me.
> I have heard that there are reciprocal agreements that mean that
> incoming mail into every country is distributed for free by the local
> carriers.
Yes!

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 02/01/2016 12:02 PM, Dave Cole wrote:
>Although Nafta was
> suppose to grease the skids between countries.   From personal
> experience, and a small biz owner I can tell you that it only greased
> the skids for big companies to transfer large quantities of goods and
> assets across the borders.
Wow, that's sure true!  I can send a package to Detroit for 
$8.  If I want to send it to London, Ont. it is $40, and the 
recipient has to pay duties on it.  Also, I have to fill out 
a bunch of paperwork for the Customs people.
>
> I'd still like to understand how China goods can be shipping and
> imported into the US for virtually free, but I can't ship the same item
> across the country for anything close to the same cost.
> If anyone knows, please enlighten me.
>
>
You buy it on eBay, "free shipping".  The government of 
China allows internet sellers to ship out for free, they are 
subsidizing it. They put "sample" or "gift" on the customs 
form, which is, of course, illegal, so there are no customs 
duties.  It is a racket, maybe the Chinese government even 
has flyers or classes to teach people how to do this.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 02/01/2016 12:01 PM, andy pugh wrote:
> On 1 February 2016 at 17:40, Jon Elson  wrote:
>> The US was the ONLY developed country that was not left in
>> total ruin in 1945.  (Well, Britain wasn't all that bad.)
> Britain had intact government and institutions, but the major
> industrial centres had been heavily bombed and we were flat-out broke.
>
Yes, what I meant was they were in better shape than Germany 
and Japan.  Britain's economy was about as wrecked as 
Germany's, though.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Gregg Eshelman]

Aliexpress is just a site for vendors to sell through. AFAIK, Aliexpress 
sells nothing themselves.

So if you get bad packaging from one vendor, it's not the fault of 
Aliexpress.

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Marshland Engineering]

Farnell Newark Element 14 Joke All the same company. Joke

It is cheaper for me to order parts from the US plus shipping by (1/3) than
buy locally from the Newark in New Zealand and this was on a $800 order for
multi turn pots. I now only buy from the branded houses if I need next day
else eBay or aliexpress. 


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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Marshland Engineering]

I had a Chinese migrant who worked for me here in New Zealand and her comment
was, Aliexpress is just EBay. It is not a one big shop selling everything. It
is many many sellers with their goods. Check their feedback first.  

Best thing is when you receive the goods open a dispute and then let
Aliexpress sort it out. I have always had a successful outcome. One time I
kept the goods and got a full refund. 

PS The money I have saved on Aliexpress over the years will more cover a dud
order or 2.   


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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 02/01/2016 12:44 AM, John Dammeyer wrote:
>   So the deck is stacked against Canadian companies in all sorts of
> directions.
>
Well, the only hope is to find a niche so small that the 
Chinese copycats can't be bothered to copy what you are doing.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[andy pugh]

On 1 February 2016 at 05:10, John Dammeyer  wrote:
> Digikey stuff overnight unless there's been some sort of weather delay.
> There is no shipping charge if the order is over $200.

RS used to offer free shipping for any order size, then changed it to
free for orders > £20.
It looks like that was unpopular, so now it is free shipping for all
online orders again.

However, a "test shop" suggests that I would need to spend nearly
£4.32 (including 75p tax) as the cheapest MOSFET is £0.18 but comes in
20x multples.

I think RS is Allied in the US, but the Allied web site has nowhere
near the breadth or depth of stock that the rswww,com site has.
http://www.alliedelec.com/on-semiconductor-2n7000rlrag/70100110/

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me (OT warning)

[Nicklas Karlsson]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 08:27:42 -0800
Steve Traugott  wrote:

> Interesting.  My wife and I run an electronics manufacturing business. ...

Interesting wife and business seems exciting. One of my teachers once asked why 
women prefer gold it does not corrode but I answered it's because gold is 
expensive and he thought it was very funny. I guess the only thing worse would 
be wife in combination with Chinese.

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Steve Traugott]

Interesting.  My wife and I run an electronics manufacturing business.  We
tend to prefer mouser *because* their parametric search works so well --
I've always thought it was better than Digikey's.

I think it probably comes down to getting the hang of a particular web
site's parametric search.  For instance, in Mouser's case, you need to make
sure you select a category after entering anything in the search box,
otherwise you don't get the parametric search UI.  This makes sense; they
can't really show the parameter selections for a random assortment of parts
and equipment in an assortment of categories, because the set of parameter
selection boxes would explode sideways across the page.

Adapting John's Digikey example to Mouser:  Type "MOSFET" in the search
field, check the "stocked" box, hit submit.  That gives you a list of
categories.  Click on the MOSFET category; that opens up the parametric
search.  Select TO-92, select sub-1-ohm.  That gives 8 matches, all of
which are available in qty 1.

>From http://www.mouser.com/helppage/#nomin: "No minimum order dollar amount
on products normally stocked in our warehouse."

Steve

On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 3:51 PM, John Kasunich 
wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2016, at 06:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 31 January 2016 13:43:50 Jon Elson wrote:
> >
> > > I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese
> > > source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and
> > > Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.
> > >
> > Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly for a
> > 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price range.
> > That and their sites search engines return what looks to me to be random
> > from dice throws results.  If I go searching for small hexfets I get
> > 20,000 hits, none of which give me the data to make a choice
> > semi-intelligently.  Digikey is slightly better, but not enough to spend
> > hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding the important data.
> > More often than not, clicking on a fine tune option, such as any case
> > smaller than a to-220 returns zero results and I know that there are
> > smaller versions such as could drive an ice cube relay at 12 or 24
> > volts.  That can be easily put in a to-92, or even in a SMD package, so
> > why can't it be found?
>
> I find this rather confusing.  Mouser is meh, but IMHO Digikey's search
> engine is simply outstanding.  For example:
>
> I type MOSFET into the search box.  It returns a list of categories.
> I pick "FETS - Single".  It returns a list of 39000+ parts.
> I click the "In stock" box and "apply filters".  List is now 17,999 parts.
> Scroll over to "Mounting Type", select "Thru hole" and apply filters.
> 3293 parts.
> Scroll over to "Supplier Device Package" and select the four TO-92 variants
> (ctrl-click for multiple selections).  Apply filters, 123 parts.
> Under packaging, select "Bulk" and "Cut tape", (the other variants are for
> large quantities).  Apply filters, down to 106.
> Select 40 to 100V in the drain-to-source voltage box, down to 59.
> Select all the sub-1-ohm ones in the Rds-on box, down to 7.
> Put "1" in the desired quantity box.  Hit the up arrow in the price column
> to sort cheapest first (giving a quantity moves anything with a minimum
> order larger than that quantity items to the bottom of the list).
> Cheapest part is at the top of the list, MicroChip TN0604N3-G.  Click
> on the PDF icon in the 2nd column and I'm looking at a data sheet.
> Click on the links in the 4th or 5th column and I'm looking at the
> details page for that part.  Add 1 to cart.  Place order.  There is no
> minimum total order (although it sucks to spend $6 on shipping when
> you are ordering a $1 part).
>
> It took me less time to find that part than it took to type out what I did.
>
> Digikey is absolutely my first stop for just about any part, both for
> hobby stuff and for my day job.  Like McMaster, their prices may
> be a bit higher than some other sources, but usually not enough to
> matter, and the search engine more than makes up for it.
>
> John Kasunich
>
>   John Kasunich
>   jmkasun...@fastmail.fm
>
>
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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Mark]

On 02/01/2016 11:27 AM, Steve Traugott wrote:
> Interesting.  My wife and I run an electronics manufacturing business.  We
> tend to prefer mouser *because* their parametric search works so well --
> I've always thought it was better than Digikey's.
>
> I think it probably comes down to getting the hang of a particular web
> site's parametric search.  For instance, in Mouser's case, you need to make
> sure you select a category after entering anything in the search box,
> otherwise you don't get the parametric search UI.  This makes sense; they
> can't really show the parameter selections for a random assortment of parts
> and equipment in an assortment of categories, because the set of parameter
> selection boxes would explode sideways across the page.
>
> Adapting John's Digikey example to Mouser:  Type "MOSFET" in the search
> field, check the "stocked" box, hit submit.  That gives you a list of
> categories.  Click on the MOSFET category; that opens up the parametric
> search.  Select TO-92, select sub-1-ohm.  That gives 8 matches, all of
> which are available in qty 1.
>
> >From http://www.mouser.com/helppage/#nomin: "No minimum order dollar amount
> on products normally stocked in our warehouse."
>
> Steve
I'm of the same mind as Steve.  I repair old Tektronix equipment, and I 
rely more on Mouser than Digikey, though I do use Digikey when Mouser 
doesn't have the part I'm looking for in stock.  Never had an issue with 
a minimum dollar amount order.  Usually where I run into issues is 
finding old components (or obsolete) either in stock or offered in 
quantities less than a large amount.  I also use Allied, Newark and 
sometimes Jameco to find the stuff I need.

Mark

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 01/31/2016 11:29 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> On 01/31/2016 11:10 PM, John Dammeyer wrote:
>> In Canada we pay in Canadian dollars and the prices of the parts are
>> suitably inflated past just the exchange rate.  There is no minimum and
>> shipping is a flat $8.  I'm on Vancouver Island and FedEx delivers the
>> Digikey stuff overnight unless there's been some sort of weather delay.
>> There is no shipping charge if the order is over $200.
> HUH!  I always have to pay for shipping, and I recently made
> a $2800 order from Digi-Key.
> I wonder what I'm doing wrong?
>
So, I checked the terms and conditions at Digi-Key.  They 
will pay the shipping (apparently on ALL orders) if you 
prepay with check or money order.  Of course, that means you 
have to MAIL the order to them, adding about a week to the 
delivery.

I have an open credit account with them, and order online.  
If I order in the evening, they ship early the next 
morning.  FedEx ground gets it here almost always on the 2nd 
day.

They also indicate no minimum order.

On neat thing at Mouser is if some items are out of stock, 
they will pick up the shipping on the backordered items.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Rafael]

On 02/01/2016 09:42 AM, Jon Elson wrote:
> On 02/01/2016 12:44 AM, John Dammeyer wrote:
>>So the deck is stacked against Canadian companies in all sorts of
>> directions.
>>
> Well, the only hope is to find a niche so small that the
> Chinese copycats can't be bothered to copy what you are doing.
>
> Jon

Just you wish. At last CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas you 
could see Chinese copy EVERYTHING: electronic components, measuring 
equipment, phones, electronic tablets, industrial carrying cases, 3D 
printers, drones, segway, and on and on. Similar to what Japanese and S. 
Koreans were doing for many years also.

You have to survive. Not bad for all of human kind in a way. In general 
you get what you pay for. For that reason I would never buy Chinese 
lathe/mill combo again or a CNC machine.

I wish Middle Eastern folks would figure this out by now. The only 
exception is Israel which presented a number of innovations at CES. My 
guess is that others from the ME were not encouraged to come to CES and 
present suicide wests and other inventions they so feverishly work on.

After everybody gets rich, we'll start wars and repeat the cycle.

-- 
Rafael

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[andy pugh]

On 1 February 2016 at 18:02, Dave Cole  wrote:
> I'd still like to understand how China goods can be shipping and
> imported into the US for virtually free, but I can't ship the same item
> across the country for anything close to the same cost.
> If anyone knows, please enlighten me.

I have heard that there are reciprocal agreements that mean that
incoming mail into every country is distributed for free by the local
carriers.

The vast disparity in volumes in the two directions means that China
Post can get stuff to the US / UK / CA border for pennies, and then it
is the job of the local distributors to get them to your house.

Local postage thus ends up having to subsidise the imports.

As i said, I have _heard_ this. I can see that it is probably the
case, it would have made sense for centuries. I don't know it to be a
fact, and would like corroboration.

-- 
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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[andy pugh]

On 1 February 2016 at 17:40, Jon Elson  wrote:
> The US was the ONLY developed country that was not left in
> total ruin in 1945.  (Well, Britain wasn't all that bad.)

Britain had intact government and institutions, but the major
industrial centres had been heavily bombed and we were flat-out broke.

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Dave Cole]

A good chunk of my "Cole" family branch lived on Vancouver Island and 
some still do.
Another branch is from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and we all still 
stay in touch which is rather amazing to me.

The US has a love-hate relationship with Canada.  Although Nafta was 
suppose to grease the skids between countries.   From personal 
experience, and a small biz owner I can tell you that it only greased 
the skids for big companies to transfer large quantities of goods and 
assets across the borders.  Small biz and individuals don't enjoy the 
same benefits.   Just try and an purchase a machine tool in Canada and 
get clear direction on how to get it into the US.  Canada is reasonably 
cooperative, however the US border agents are incredibly ignorant and 
intolerable of any small level import/export.   Its so bad that they 
will almost not even talk to someone on the phone about it.

I did some business in Mexico and I saw the same thing there. The big 
companies get attention and assistance, the small companies and 
individuals are basically harassed to the point where it does not pay to 
import/export to Canada or Mexico. Canada and Mexico have been bullied 
by the US into trade agreements that favor large companies and the 
US.Canada and Mexico suffer because of this.

I'd still like to understand how China goods can be shipping and 
imported into the US for virtually free, but I can't ship the same item 
across the country for anything close to the same cost.
If anyone knows, please enlighten me.

Dave


On 2/1/2016 1:44 AM, John Dammeyer wrote:
> Hi Jon,
> I can buy 100 pieces at $8.622 each in Cdn. which is about $6.15US  or
> $862.20 Cdn total ($615.00 US).
> http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/DSPIC30F5011-20I%2FPT/DSPIC30F5011-2
> 0I%2FPT-ND/691581
>
> The US site lists 100 pieces at $5.67 US or $567;  a difference of $48.
> http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/DSPIC30F5011-20I%2FPT/DSPIC30F5011-
> 20I%2FPT-ND/691581
>
> So in essence although I'm getting 'free' shipping I'm charged an extra $48
> for the part which includes that shipping cost and the Harmonized Tariff
> document preparation which is used to create a disadvantage for Canadian
> companies.
>
> I can work my buns off but, costs to ship from say Vancouver BC to Vancouver
> Washington (about 20 miles I think), are higher than to ship from Vancouver
> Washing to Portland Oregon.  And the Vancouver Washington company doesn't
> have to create 3 copies of the invoice and the appropriate forms including
> the declaration whether the product will be resold to another 'bad or evil'
> country.
>
> An author named Tom Peters, decades ago, wrote a book called "In Search of
> Excellence".  He proposed that the reason American Industry had been so
> successful after WW-2 was because Europe was rebuilding itself; not because
> it was better at it so it was an easy battle to win.  He stated once Europe
> was on its feet American companies would start to become less competitive.
> Apple Computer was a single shining example of how to do things right.
>
> So although it may appear that I have an advantage with free shipping I'm
> paying more for my product raw materials and I'm paying more to compete with
> you when I ship into the USA.  Were I building an identical product to yours
> of course.
>
> And if I order a USB Gender Changer from China I pay $6 for the item with
> free shipping.  I weighed the package that arrived a few weeks later and
> found it would cost me more than $6 to ship that same package from Victoria
> (on Vancouver Island) to Vancouver BC (on the mainland).   And that's within
> Canada.  So the deck is stacked against Canadian companies in all sorts of
> directions.
>
> John Dammeyer
>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Jon Elson [mailto:el...@pico-systems.com]
>> Sent: January-31-16 9:29 PM
>> To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
>> Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me
>>
>>
>> On 01/31/2016 11:10 PM, John Dammeyer wrote:
>>> In Canada we pay in Canadian dollars and the prices of the parts are
>>> suitably inflated past just the exchange rate.  There is no minimum and
>>> shipping is a flat $8.  I'm on Vancouver Island and FedEx delivers the
>>> Digikey stuff overnight unless there's been some sort of weather delay.
>>> There is no shipping charge if the order is over $200.
>> HUH!  I always have to pay for shipping, and I recently made
>> a $2800 order from Digi-Key.
>> I wonder what I'm doing wrong?
>>> Digikey also has a really good service that puts any quantity onto a
> reel
>>> for an extra charge; called a digi-reel.  If I'm making 100 pieces a
> product
>>> and I need 3 of a particular capacitor I can order 320 devices on a reel
>>> instead of 3000 pieces.  My Pick and Place supplier likes it.  No
> screwing
>>> around with strips of 50 or 100 where the first 25 have to be discarded
> for
>>> the leader.  I like it because there's less effort in manufacturing and
> I'm

Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me (OT warning)

[Evan Foss]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Nicklas Karlsson
 wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 08:27:42 -0800
> Steve Traugott  wrote:
>
>> Interesting.  My wife and I run an electronics manufacturing business. ...
>
> Interesting wife and business seems exciting. One of my teachers once asked 
> why women prefer gold it does not corrode but I answered it's because gold is 
> expensive and he thought it was very funny. I guess the only thing worse 
> would be wife in combination with Chinese.

While I share your distrust of Chinese made products I don't care for
the sexism here.

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[John Dammeyer]

So far that's been my Electronic Lead Screw for Lathes.  But that's a tiny
market.  Any LED light show stuff that I build is available cheaper from
other places.  Only when it's a government sponsored project like the one in
the link do I get to design the hardware and software.  For this project
other than parts we also used local manufacturing and suppliers for
everything.
http://www.autoartisans.com/rings/Barge1a.jpg

John


> -Original Message-
> From: Jon Elson [mailto:el...@pico-systems.com]
> Sent: February-01-16 9:42 AM
> To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
> Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me
> 
> 
> On 02/01/2016 12:44 AM, John Dammeyer wrote:
> >   So the deck is stacked against Canadian companies in all sorts of
> > directions.
> >
> Well, the only hope is to find a niche so small that the
> Chinese copycats can't be bothered to copy what you are doing.
> 
> Jon
> 
>

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 02/01/2016 12:44 AM, John Dammeyer wrote:
> Hi Jon,
> I can buy 100 pieces at $8.622 each in Cdn. which is about $6.15US  or
> $862.20 Cdn total ($615.00 US).
> http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/DSPIC30F5011-20I%2FPT/DSPIC30F5011-2
> 0I%2FPT-ND/691581
>
> The US site lists 100 pieces at $5.67 US or $567;  a difference of $48.
> http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/DSPIC30F5011-20I%2FPT/DSPIC30F5011-
> 20I%2FPT-ND/691581
>
> So in essence although I'm getting 'free' shipping I'm charged an extra $48
> for the part which includes that shipping cost and the Harmonized Tariff
> document preparation which is used to create a disadvantage for Canadian
> companies.
OK, I'll keep on paying my shipping!
>
> An author named Tom Peters, decades ago, wrote a book called "In Search of
> Excellence".  He proposed that the reason American Industry had been so
> successful after WW-2 was because Europe was rebuilding itself; not because
> it was better at it so it was an easy battle to win.  He stated once Europe
> was on its feet American companies would start to become less competitive.
> Apple Computer was a single shining example of how to do things right.
Yes, I've always thought this was the case.  WW-II wrecked 
all developed and partly developed countries, and they had 
to rebuild infrastructure, capital systems and industry.  A 
HARD job, for sure.
The US was the ONLY developed country that was not left in 
total ruin in 1945.  (Well, Britain wasn't all that bad.)  
So, we ended up selling a huge amount of things, from cars 
to washing machines to airplanes to all the rest of the 
world.  And, of course, the foolish shangri-la of communism 
perpetuated this in a number of large countries, until they 
finally realized "it isn't working!"  From the late 40's to 
the 70's, we were accumulating all the capital of the whole 
world.  Eventually, it all had to turn around and start 
evening out.
>
> And if I order a USB Gender Changer from China I pay $6 for the item with
> free shipping.  I weighed the package that arrived a few weeks later and
> found it would cost me more than $6 to ship that same package from Victoria
> (on Vancouver Island) to Vancouver BC (on the mainland).   And that's within
> Canada.  So the deck is stacked against Canadian companies in all sorts of
> directions.
>
>
The Chinese government is subsidizing all this.  They allow 
free shipping so they can get foreign currency.  Overseas 
shipping is a gentleman's agreement.  You pay a fee in your 
country, get the parcel to our customs dock, and we will get 
it sent out to the recipient.  No money changes hands 
between countries.  So, if the Chinese government wants to 
let their shippers send stuff to us with no mailing fee, we 
have to accept that.  And, of course, with China it DOESN'T 
balance out, a lot more comes INTO the US than goes back 
there.  (And, probably the same for Canada, too.)

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[John Dammeyer]

Gene,
Never ever wrap static sensitive semiconductors in foil.  The point of the
pink or black antistatic materials is to 'slowly' conduct the energy from
the device or your fingers.  Foil is a great conductor and you are more
likely to damage them wrapping them in foil than just handling them with
your bare fingers.
It's the speed of the transition that causes the heat that causes the
internal structure to be damaged.
Not that plastic tape is good.  But foil is a no-no.
John


> -Original Message-
> From: Gene Heskett [mailto:ghesk...@wdtv.com]
> Sent: January-31-16 6:51 AM
> To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
> Subject: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me
> 
> 
> Greetings;
> 
> I had asked about them prior to ordering some hexfet transistors from
> their site.
> 
> The cro-magnun filling the order has no clue about the care and feeding
> of mosfet transistors, so the 10 pack I ordered were arranged as 2 rows
> of 5, with the legs interdigitated, bound in scotch tape as a slab to
> fit nicely in a China Post envelope.  But no provision for static
> absorbing, no shorting wires, or any of that black anti-static foam was
> used. I did get the first one cut loose, leaving the tape until such
> time as I could grab the legs with damp fingers before removing the rest
> of the tape.  I was not so lucky with the 2nd, so I dropped the packet
> into a container of somewhat dirty water to control the static while I
> untangled the next 3. The rest were wrapped in foil & put away.
> 
> Then they wanted feedback, been pestering me about it nearly every day
> for a week so of course they sent an html encoded message with no text.
> The 244 character long URL did not surive the trip so it didn't work, no
> <> wrapped around it to make it a valid link.  So I replied to the
> originating address giving them a small piece of my mind that I can
> still spare. KMail of course stripped the html, leaving only the
> spamassassin report defining all the reasons it landed in my spam
> folder.
> 
> And just for good measure, included  in the To:
> column.  And that bounced instantaneously with the message that I have
> no account there. By the RFC's as IUI, that MUST BE a valid address.
> 
> Bottom line is that I will not purchase any more semi-conductors from
> them. Buyer beware if you do.  I won't.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
> 
>

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 01/31/2016 08:50 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> The cro-magnun filling the order has no clue about the care and feeding
> of mosfet transistors, so the 10 pack I ordered were arranged as 2 rows
> of 5, with the legs interdigitated, bound in scotch tape as a slab to
> fit nicely in a China Post envelope.
I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese 
source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and 
Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.  I buy 
lots of batches of 10 of some part when I'm not sure it will 
work for a particular application.  I can usually get my 
parts in 2-3 days.

(The only place Digi-Key annoys me is if I buy 50 or less 
FPGAs or CPLDs from them, they repackage them in strips of 5 
chips in tapes, rather than giving me the whole tape in one 
long strip.  These don't feed well in my pick and place 
machine.)

Sometimes they also pile delicate components in an 
anti-static bag, and the leads get a bit bent up, but that 
is pretty rare.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Dave Cole]

On 1/31/2016 6:51 PM, John Kasunich wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2016, at 06:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Sunday 31 January 2016 13:43:50 Jon Elson wrote:
>>
>>> I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese
>>> source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and
>>> Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.
>>>
>> Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly for a
>> 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price range.
>> That and their sites search engines return what looks to me to be random
>> from dice throws results.  If I go searching for small hexfets I get
>> 20,000 hits, none of which give me the data to make a choice
>> semi-intelligently.  Digikey is slightly better, but not enough to spend
>> hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding the important data.
>> More often than not, clicking on a fine tune option, such as any case
>> smaller than a to-220 returns zero results and I know that there are
>> smaller versions such as could drive an ice cube relay at 12 or 24
>> volts.  That can be easily put in a to-92, or even in a SMD package, so
>> why can't it be found?
> I find this rather confusing.  Mouser is meh, but IMHO Digikey's search
> engine is simply outstanding.  For example:
>
> I type MOSFET into the search box.  It returns a list of categories.
> I pick "FETS - Single".  It returns a list of 39000+ parts.
> I click the "In stock" box and "apply filters".  List is now 17,999 parts.
> Scroll over to "Mounting Type", select "Thru hole" and apply filters.  3293 
> parts.
> Scroll over to "Supplier Device Package" and select the four TO-92 variants
> (ctrl-click for multiple selections).  Apply filters, 123 parts.
> Under packaging, select "Bulk" and "Cut tape", (the other variants are for
> large quantities).  Apply filters, down to 106.
> Select 40 to 100V in the drain-to-source voltage box, down to 59.
> Select all the sub-1-ohm ones in the Rds-on box, down to 7.
> Put "1" in the desired quantity box.  Hit the up arrow in the price column
> to sort cheapest first (giving a quantity moves anything with a minimum
> order larger than that quantity items to the bottom of the list).
> Cheapest part is at the top of the list, MicroChip TN0604N3-G.  Click
> on the PDF icon in the 2nd column and I'm looking at a data sheet.
> Click on the links in the 4th or 5th column and I'm looking at the
> details page for that part.  Add 1 to cart.  Place order.  There is no
> minimum total order (although it sucks to spend $6 on shipping when
> you are ordering a $1 part).
>
> It took me less time to find that part than it took to type out what I did.
>
> Digikey is absolutely my first stop for just about any part, both for
> hobby stuff and for my day job.  Like McMaster, their prices may
> be a bit higher than some other sources, but usually not enough to
> matter, and the search engine more than makes up for it.
>
> John Kasunich
>
>John Kasunich
>jmkasun...@fastmail.fm
>
The other nice thing about Digikey is that they will ship a small order 
via First Class mail (at least they used to do that..)

I've ordered a dozen chips for some project and the total has been 
something like $9.00 plus $1.30 for postage and the parts show up two 
days later in a first class envelope.

Whats not to like about that!

Dave



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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 31 January 2016 14:16:17 John Dammeyer wrote:

> Gene,
> Never ever wrap static sensitive semiconductors in foil.  The point of
> the pink or black antistatic materials is to 'slowly' conduct the
> energy from the device or your fingers.  Foil is a great conductor and
> you are more likely to damage them wrapping them in foil than just
> handling them with your bare fingers.
> It's the speed of the transition that causes the heat that causes the
> internal structure to be damaged.
> Not that plastic tape is good.  But foil is a no-no.
> John

Probably correct, not to mention the oxide film on the old foil is good 
for nearly 400 volts. I'll much around and find a smallish pink bag.

Thanks for the heads up.  Thanks John D.
>
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Gene Heskett [mailto:ghesk...@wdtv.com]
> > Sent: January-31-16 6:51 AM
> > To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
> > Subject: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me
> >
> >
> > Greetings;
> >
> > I had asked about them prior to ordering some hexfet transistors
> > from their site.
> >
> > The cro-magnun filling the order has no clue about the care and
> > feeding of mosfet transistors, so the 10 pack I ordered were
> > arranged as 2 rows of 5, with the legs interdigitated, bound in
> > scotch tape as a slab to fit nicely in a China Post envelope.  But
> > no provision for static absorbing, no shorting wires, or any of that
> > black anti-static foam was used. I did get the first one cut loose,
> > leaving the tape until such time as I could grab the legs with damp
> > fingers before removing the rest of the tape.  I was not so lucky
> > with the 2nd, so I dropped the packet into a container of somewhat
> > dirty water to control the static while I untangled the next 3. The
> > rest were wrapped in foil & put away.
> >
> > Then they wanted feedback, been pestering me about it nearly every
> > day for a week so of course they sent an html encoded message with
> > no text. The 244 character long URL did not surive the trip so it
> > didn't work, no <> wrapped around it to make it a valid link.  So I
> > replied to the originating address giving them a small piece of my
> > mind that I can still spare. KMail of course stripped the html,
> > leaving only the spamassassin report defining all the reasons it
> > landed in my spam folder.
> >
> > And just for good measure, included  in the
> > To: column.  And that bounced instantaneously with the message that
> > I have no account there. By the RFC's as IUI, that MUST BE a valid
> > address.
> >
> > Bottom line is that I will not purchase any more semi-conductors
> > from them. Buyer beware if you do.  I won't.
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett
> > --
> > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> >  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> > -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> > Genes Web page 
>
> --
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Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 31 January 2016 13:43:50 Jon Elson wrote:

> On 01/31/2016 08:50 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > The cro-magnun filling the order has no clue about the care and
> > feeding of mosfet transistors, so the 10 pack I ordered were
> > arranged as 2 rows of 5, with the legs interdigitated, bound in
> > scotch tape as a slab to fit nicely in a China Post envelope.
>
> I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese
> source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and
> Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.  I buy
> lots of batches of 10 of some part when I'm not sure it will
> work for a particular application.  I can usually get my
> parts in 2-3 days.
>
Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly for a 
10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price range.  
That and their sites search engines return what looks to me to be random 
from dice throws results.  If I go searching for small hexfets I get 
20,000 hits, none of which give me the data to make a choice 
semi-intelligently.  Digikey is slightly better, but not enough to spend 
hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding the important data.  
More often than not, clicking on a fine tune option, such as any case 
smaller than a to-220 returns zero results and I know that there are 
smaller versions such as could drive an ice cube relay at 12 or 24 
volts.  That can be easily put in a to-92, or even in a SMD package, so 
why can't it be found?

> (The only place Digi-Key annoys me is if I buy 50 or less
> FPGAs or CPLDs from them, they repackage them in strips of 5
> chips in tapes, rather than giving me the whole tape in one
> long strip.  These don't feed well in my pick and place
> machine.)
>
> Sometimes they also pile delicate components in an
> anti-static bag, and the leads get a bit bent up, but that
> is pretty rare.
>
> Jon

FATCare's the controller and motor, once wired up and powered up, runs 
just fine.  I left it running, no load, at 12k revs (200 Hz) for about 
20 minutes, might have warmed up the motor by 10F, tested the fwd/rev & 
back, and other than the rate ramps being slow even set for 10 seconds, 
OOB setting was 45 seconds, it Just Works(TM).  Even at 24k revs, the 
noise level was quite a bit lower than I expected. Rotor balanceing is 
excellent.

The booklet describes braking resistors and what terminals to wire them 
to, but on opening up the rest of the front panel & removing the control 
pcb, no hint of those named terminals could be found on the main board.  
There is a place where a bigger, taller electrlytic cap could be 
installed, but I get the impression its not needed when running on a 250 
volt single phase circuit. I cleared the ebay ticket.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[John Kasunich]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2016, at 06:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 31 January 2016 13:43:50 Jon Elson wrote:
> 
> > I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese
> > source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and
> > Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.  
> >
> Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly for a 
> 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price range.  
> That and their sites search engines return what looks to me to be random 
> from dice throws results.  If I go searching for small hexfets I get 
> 20,000 hits, none of which give me the data to make a choice 
> semi-intelligently.  Digikey is slightly better, but not enough to spend 
> hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding the important data.  
> More often than not, clicking on a fine tune option, such as any case 
> smaller than a to-220 returns zero results and I know that there are 
> smaller versions such as could drive an ice cube relay at 12 or 24 
> volts.  That can be easily put in a to-92, or even in a SMD package, so 
> why can't it be found?

I find this rather confusing.  Mouser is meh, but IMHO Digikey's search
engine is simply outstanding.  For example:

I type MOSFET into the search box.  It returns a list of categories.
I pick "FETS - Single".  It returns a list of 39000+ parts.
I click the "In stock" box and "apply filters".  List is now 17,999 parts.
Scroll over to "Mounting Type", select "Thru hole" and apply filters.  3293 
parts.
Scroll over to "Supplier Device Package" and select the four TO-92 variants
(ctrl-click for multiple selections).  Apply filters, 123 parts.
Under packaging, select "Bulk" and "Cut tape", (the other variants are for
large quantities).  Apply filters, down to 106.
Select 40 to 100V in the drain-to-source voltage box, down to 59.
Select all the sub-1-ohm ones in the Rds-on box, down to 7.
Put "1" in the desired quantity box.  Hit the up arrow in the price column
to sort cheapest first (giving a quantity moves anything with a minimum
order larger than that quantity items to the bottom of the list).
Cheapest part is at the top of the list, MicroChip TN0604N3-G.  Click
on the PDF icon in the 2nd column and I'm looking at a data sheet.
Click on the links in the 4th or 5th column and I'm looking at the 
details page for that part.  Add 1 to cart.  Place order.  There is no
minimum total order (although it sucks to spend $6 on shipping when
you are ordering a $1 part).

It took me less time to find that part than it took to type out what I did.

Digikey is absolutely my first stop for just about any part, both for
hobby stuff and for my day job.  Like McMaster, their prices may 
be a bit higher than some other sources, but usually not enough to
matter, and the search engine more than makes up for it.

John Kasunich

  John Kasunich
  jmkasun...@fastmail.fm

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[TJoseph Powderly]

yes the search is great, the delivery is quick & selection very good
CAVET
make sure you have all the parts ordered
then wait a while and see if the list is still complete

several times i found one small item missing
and ended up paying a second shipping charge
hard to do when its a rush fix for a customers machine,
but at least be santa claus and check it twice
hth
TomP

maybe chg topic to 'good parts vendors'
searches on todays 'subjects' are not likely to find info on the topic 
header
my2c

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[John Dammeyer]

Hi Jon,
I can buy 100 pieces at $8.622 each in Cdn. which is about $6.15US  or
$862.20 Cdn total ($615.00 US).
http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/DSPIC30F5011-20I%2FPT/DSPIC30F5011-2
0I%2FPT-ND/691581

The US site lists 100 pieces at $5.67 US or $567;  a difference of $48. 
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/DSPIC30F5011-20I%2FPT/DSPIC30F5011-
20I%2FPT-ND/691581

So in essence although I'm getting 'free' shipping I'm charged an extra $48
for the part which includes that shipping cost and the Harmonized Tariff
document preparation which is used to create a disadvantage for Canadian
companies.  

I can work my buns off but, costs to ship from say Vancouver BC to Vancouver
Washington (about 20 miles I think), are higher than to ship from Vancouver
Washing to Portland Oregon.  And the Vancouver Washington company doesn't
have to create 3 copies of the invoice and the appropriate forms including
the declaration whether the product will be resold to another 'bad or evil'
country.

An author named Tom Peters, decades ago, wrote a book called "In Search of
Excellence".  He proposed that the reason American Industry had been so
successful after WW-2 was because Europe was rebuilding itself; not because
it was better at it so it was an easy battle to win.  He stated once Europe
was on its feet American companies would start to become less competitive.
Apple Computer was a single shining example of how to do things right.

So although it may appear that I have an advantage with free shipping I'm
paying more for my product raw materials and I'm paying more to compete with
you when I ship into the USA.  Were I building an identical product to yours
of course.

And if I order a USB Gender Changer from China I pay $6 for the item with
free shipping.  I weighed the package that arrived a few weeks later and
found it would cost me more than $6 to ship that same package from Victoria
(on Vancouver Island) to Vancouver BC (on the mainland).   And that's within
Canada.  So the deck is stacked against Canadian companies in all sorts of
directions.

John Dammeyer

> -Original Message-
> From: Jon Elson [mailto:el...@pico-systems.com]
> Sent: January-31-16 9:29 PM
> To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
> Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me
> 
> 
> On 01/31/2016 11:10 PM, John Dammeyer wrote:
> > In Canada we pay in Canadian dollars and the prices of the parts are
> > suitably inflated past just the exchange rate.  There is no minimum and
> > shipping is a flat $8.  I'm on Vancouver Island and FedEx delivers the
> > Digikey stuff overnight unless there's been some sort of weather delay.
> > There is no shipping charge if the order is over $200.
> HUH!  I always have to pay for shipping, and I recently made
> a $2800 order from Digi-Key.
> I wonder what I'm doing wrong?
> >
> > Digikey also has a really good service that puts any quantity onto a
reel
> > for an extra charge; called a digi-reel.  If I'm making 100 pieces a
product
> > and I need 3 of a particular capacitor I can order 320 devices on a reel
> > instead of 3000 pieces.  My Pick and Place supplier likes it.  No
screwing
> > around with strips of 50 or 100 where the first 25 have to be discarded
for
> > the leader.  I like it because there's less effort in manufacturing and
I'm
> > usually left with a few parts for the next prototype.
> >
> The Digi-reel adds $7 to the cost of the parts.  One
> advantage of my Philips CSM-84 is the feeders don't require
> and trailer and you can thread them (without Digi-reel or
> anything special) with just a little fiddling so you only
> lose 2 parts.  Once threaded, you splice the cover tape with
> masking tape to a piece of old cover tape you have kept in
> reserve.  I'd really have a problem with dumping 25 parts of
> each type when threading the machine!
> 
> Some other outfits splice leader to the tapes, and I usually
> end up just ripping them off, as they put this brass
> perforated splice thing over the sprocket holes, and it is
> so much thicker than the tape that it won't feed.
> 
> Jon
> 
>

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Leonardo Marsaglia]

I second that love for Digikey. It's easier for me to buy from them 9.000
km away from them, than going to a local store here in my country. I
usually have the parts in 4 or 5 days and everything is well packed. Also
the search engine and order placement is great.

A question about pricing on FPGAs, and just out of my curiosity. Why is it
the most expensive ones cost over 50k dolars? I know they have great
paralelism capabilities and a lot of IOs but god those are expensive!

2016-01-31 21:10 GMT-03:00 Dave Cole :

> On 1/31/2016 6:51 PM, John Kasunich wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 31, 2016, at 06:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> On Sunday 31 January 2016 13:43:50 Jon Elson wrote:
> >>
> >>> I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese
> >>> source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and
> >>> Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.
> >>>
> >> Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly for a
> >> 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price range.
> >> That and their sites search engines return what looks to me to be random
> >> from dice throws results.  If I go searching for small hexfets I get
> >> 20,000 hits, none of which give me the data to make a choice
> >> semi-intelligently.  Digikey is slightly better, but not enough to spend
> >> hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding the important data.
> >> More often than not, clicking on a fine tune option, such as any case
> >> smaller than a to-220 returns zero results and I know that there are
> >> smaller versions such as could drive an ice cube relay at 12 or 24
> >> volts.  That can be easily put in a to-92, or even in a SMD package, so
> >> why can't it be found?
> > I find this rather confusing.  Mouser is meh, but IMHO Digikey's search
> > engine is simply outstanding.  For example:
> >
> > I type MOSFET into the search box.  It returns a list of categories.
> > I pick "FETS - Single".  It returns a list of 39000+ parts.
> > I click the "In stock" box and "apply filters".  List is now 17,999
> parts.
> > Scroll over to "Mounting Type", select "Thru hole" and apply filters.
> 3293 parts.
> > Scroll over to "Supplier Device Package" and select the four TO-92
> variants
> > (ctrl-click for multiple selections).  Apply filters, 123 parts.
> > Under packaging, select "Bulk" and "Cut tape", (the other variants are
> for
> > large quantities).  Apply filters, down to 106.
> > Select 40 to 100V in the drain-to-source voltage box, down to 59.
> > Select all the sub-1-ohm ones in the Rds-on box, down to 7.
> > Put "1" in the desired quantity box.  Hit the up arrow in the price
> column
> > to sort cheapest first (giving a quantity moves anything with a minimum
> > order larger than that quantity items to the bottom of the list).
> > Cheapest part is at the top of the list, MicroChip TN0604N3-G.  Click
> > on the PDF icon in the 2nd column and I'm looking at a data sheet.
> > Click on the links in the 4th or 5th column and I'm looking at the
> > details page for that part.  Add 1 to cart.  Place order.  There is no
> > minimum total order (although it sucks to spend $6 on shipping when
> > you are ordering a $1 part).
> >
> > It took me less time to find that part than it took to type out what I
> did.
> >
> > Digikey is absolutely my first stop for just about any part, both for
> > hobby stuff and for my day job.  Like McMaster, their prices may
> > be a bit higher than some other sources, but usually not enough to
> > matter, and the search engine more than makes up for it.
> >
> > John Kasunich
> >
> >John Kasunich
> >jmkasun...@fastmail.fm
> >
> The other nice thing about Digikey is that they will ship a small order
> via First Class mail (at least they used to do that..)
>
> I've ordered a dozen chips for some project and the total has been
> something like $9.00 plus $1.30 for postage and the parts show up two
> days later in a first class envelope.
>
> Whats not to like about that!
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
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*Leonardo Marsaglia*.
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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 31 January 2016 18:51:22 John Kasunich wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 31, 2016, at 06:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 31 January 2016 13:43:50 Jon Elson wrote:
> > > I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese
> > > source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and
> > > Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.
> >
> > Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly
> > for a 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price
> > range. That and their sites search engines return what looks to me
> > to be random from dice throws results.  If I go searching for small
> > hexfets I get 20,000 hits, none of which give me the data to make a
> > choice semi-intelligently.  Digikey is slightly better, but not
> > enough to spend hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding
> > the important data. More often than not, clicking on a fine tune
> > option, such as any case smaller than a to-220 returns zero results
> > and I know that there are smaller versions such as could drive an
> > ice cube relay at 12 or 24 volts.  That can be easily put in a
> > to-92, or even in a SMD package, so why can't it be found?
>
> I find this rather confusing.  Mouser is meh, but IMHO Digikey's
> search engine is simply outstanding.  For example:
>
> I type MOSFET into the search box.  It returns a list of categories.
> I pick "FETS - Single".  It returns a list of 39000+ parts.
> I click the "In stock" box and "apply filters".  List is now 17,999
> parts. Scroll over to "Mounting Type", select "Thru hole" and apply
> filters.  3293 parts. Scroll over to "Supplier Device Package" and
> select the four TO-92 variants (ctrl-click for multiple selections). 
> Apply filters, 123 parts. Under packaging, select "Bulk" and "Cut
> tape", (the other variants are for large quantities).  Apply filters,
> down to 106.
> Select 40 to 100V in the drain-to-source voltage box, down to 59.
> Select all the sub-1-ohm ones in the Rds-on box, down to 7.
> Put "1" in the desired quantity box.  Hit the up arrow in the price
> column to sort cheapest first (giving a quantity moves anything with a
> minimum order larger than that quantity items to the bottom of the
> list). Cheapest part is at the top of the list, MicroChip TN0604N3-G. 
> Click on the PDF icon in the 2nd column and I'm looking at a data
> sheet. Click on the links in the 4th or 5th column and I'm looking at
> the details page for that part.  Add 1 to cart.  Place order.  There
> is no minimum total order (although it sucks to spend $6 on shipping
> when you are ordering a $1 part).
>
> It took me less time to find that part than it took to type out what I
> did.
>
> Digikey is absolutely my first stop for just about any part, both for
> hobby stuff and for my day job.  Like McMaster, their prices may
> be a bit higher than some other sources, but usually not enough to
> matter, and the search engine more than makes up for it.
>
> John Kasunich
>
>   John Kasunich
>   jmkasun...@fastmail.fm

That, John, sounds like a heck of an improvement over it from the last 
time I tangled with it.  Obviously the coders have been busy. I will 
take another look as my last one was 4 or 5 years ago.  The user 
interface was ok, but it just didn't work then.

And it will be intersting to see what the minimum order for private sales 
in now, then it was 50 dollars.

I bought a lot of stuff from them in the name of the tv station, but 
usually in qty's enough that the minimum didn't apply, and since we had 
a tax number, it was only 20 dollars IIRC.  But they couldn't match, 
either price or physical size, the 1 lb coffee cans full of small 
electrolytic caps used in Panasonics own DVC-PRO digital VCR's. I'm not 
kidding, there are still 3 of those cans on a high shelf in the shop 
area at the tv station, all surface mount and rarely bigger than the 
eraser on a #2 yellow pencil.

Cast iron bitch to change the next one when you already changed 75 of 
them in one machine that day & you've still got 5 more logic boards to 
go.  Part of the reason I retired when I did.  My back was even then 
giving me hell from sitting long hours hunched over & staring at the 
boards in a lighted magnifying lens.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 31 January 2016 19:10:14 Dave Cole wrote:

> On 1/31/2016 6:51 PM, John Kasunich wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 31, 2016, at 06:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> On Sunday 31 January 2016 13:43:50 Jon Elson wrote:
> >>> I can't imagine why you'd buy commodity semis from a Chinese
> >>> source when there are great distributors like Digi-Key and
> >>> Mouser, that are quite happy to serve small orders.
> >>
> >> Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly
> >> for a 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar
> >> price range. That and their sites search engines return what looks
> >> to me to be random from dice throws results.  If I go searching for
> >> small hexfets I get 20,000 hits, none of which give me the data to
> >> make a choice semi-intelligently.  Digikey is slightly better, but
> >> not enough to spend hours  wading thru the selections while still
> >> hiding the important data. More often than not, clicking on a fine
> >> tune option, such as any case smaller than a to-220 returns zero
> >> results and I know that there are smaller versions such as could
> >> drive an ice cube relay at 12 or 24 volts.  That can be easily put
> >> in a to-92, or even in a SMD package, so why can't it be found?
> >
> > I find this rather confusing.  Mouser is meh, but IMHO Digikey's
> > search engine is simply outstanding.  For example:
> >
> > I type MOSFET into the search box.  It returns a list of categories.
> > I pick "FETS - Single".  It returns a list of 39000+ parts.
> > I click the "In stock" box and "apply filters".  List is now 17,999
> > parts. Scroll over to "Mounting Type", select "Thru hole" and apply
> > filters.  3293 parts. Scroll over to "Supplier Device Package" and
> > select the four TO-92 variants (ctrl-click for multiple selections).
> >  Apply filters, 123 parts. Under packaging, select "Bulk" and "Cut
> > tape", (the other variants are for large quantities).  Apply
> > filters, down to 106.
> > Select 40 to 100V in the drain-to-source voltage box, down to 59.
> > Select all the sub-1-ohm ones in the Rds-on box, down to 7.
> > Put "1" in the desired quantity box.  Hit the up arrow in the price
> > column to sort cheapest first (giving a quantity moves anything with
> > a minimum order larger than that quantity items to the bottom of the
> > list). Cheapest part is at the top of the list, MicroChip
> > TN0604N3-G.  Click on the PDF icon in the 2nd column and I'm looking
> > at a data sheet. Click on the links in the 4th or 5th column and I'm
> > looking at the details page for that part.  Add 1 to cart.  Place
> > order.  There is no minimum total order (although it sucks to spend
> > $6 on shipping when you are ordering a $1 part).
> >
> > It took me less time to find that part than it took to type out what
> > I did.
> >
> > Digikey is absolutely my first stop for just about any part, both
> > for hobby stuff and for my day job.  Like McMaster, their prices may
> > be a bit higher than some other sources, but usually not enough to
> > matter, and the search engine more than makes up for it.
> >
> > John Kasunich
> >
> >John Kasunich
> >jmkasun...@fastmail.fm
>
> The other nice thing about Digikey is that they will ship a small
> order via First Class mail (at least they used to do that..)
>
> I've ordered a dozen chips for some project and the total has been
> something like $9.00 plus $1.30 for postage and the parts show up two
> days later in a first class envelope.
>
> Whats not to like about that!
>
> Dave
>
Nothing.  But I usually bought IC's by the tube and that doesn't fit in a 
postal envelope.  There were times when after a lightning hit on the STL 
tower, I'd need 2 sticks of tlo-84's to get all the audio working again.

I always said to myself that I'd add some snubber diodes, downstream of 
about half of the buildout resistors to keep the EMP from going above or 
below the power rails, but that would have required a fresh PCB design 
to find room for 16 more resistors and 16 more diodes per board.

My fault but I never managed to find both the time and the round tuit in 
the same 2 weeks.  And of course the NIH syndrome, as the design was 
100% mine in the first place.  Fidelity wise, it was one hell of an 
improvement over ANYTHING I could buy for a thou$and a 4 output card & 
these were 2 stereo channels with 4 outputs each on each card. Crowded, 
22 such cards in a 19" rack cage.  No slew rate limits in sight, it 
could make 30v p-p at 30 kilohertz. Some cross-over distortion started 
creeping in at about 25 kilohertz and above 27 volts p-p, but no huan 
ears can hear that. At normal signal levels, the distortion was in the 
sub .01% scale. But it could not take the EMP from a nearby lightning 
hit when some of the I/O cables were 200 feet long.  Big building, was 
going to be a Buick dealership but he ran out of money before he opened.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, 

Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 01/31/2016 06:34 PM, Leonardo Marsaglia wrote:
> A question about pricing on FPGAs, and just out of my curiosity. Why is it
> the most expensive ones cost over 50k dolars? I know they have great
> paralelism capabilities and a lot of IOs but god those are expensive!
>
>
Well, seems their only customer is the NSA for some 
supersecret code-cracking machine, and they apparently will 
pay for such devices.  The really BIG FPGAs are huge amounts 
of configurable logic.  You can probably fit 100 old 370 
computers in there and run them at 10X the original clock speed.

Possibly these also get used for simulation of chip designs 
and such stuff.  But, obviously the market for a $50K chip 
must be QUITE narrow.  And, thinking of a whole board 
covered in these chips makes my knees start quivering.

I use the $13 Xilinx Spartan 3A  50 and think it is just 
great! Smallest of the family, but plenty of resources for me.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[John Dammeyer]

In Canada we pay in Canadian dollars and the prices of the parts are
suitably inflated past just the exchange rate.  There is no minimum and
shipping is a flat $8.  I'm on Vancouver Island and FedEx delivers the
Digikey stuff overnight unless there's been some sort of weather delay.
There is no shipping charge if the order is over $200.
The increased cost of the parts covers much of the shipping charge I think.
Digikey also has a really good service that puts any quantity onto a reel
for an extra charge; called a digi-reel.  If I'm making 100 pieces a product
and I need 3 of a particular capacitor I can order 320 devices on a reel
instead of 3000 pieces.  My Pick and Place supplier likes it.  No screwing
around with strips of 50 or 100 where the first 25 have to be discarded for
the leader.  I like it because there's less effort in manufacturing and I'm
usually left with a few parts for the next prototype.
John Dammeyer


> -Original Message-
> From: Jon Elson [mailto:el...@pico-systems.com]
> Sent: January-31-16 7:33 PM
> To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
> Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me
> 
> 
> On 01/31/2016 05:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly for a
> > 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price range.
> Hmmm, I guess I order enough stuff at a time that I totally
> forgot there's a minimum order!
> But, if you have to pay shipping, it doesn't make sense to
> order just a couple small components in one order.
> 
> >   Digikey is slightly better, but not enough to spend
> > hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding the important data.
> Digi-Key's parametric search engine seems to be the BEST out
> there! They could improve it by having RANGES to match by,
> but it really works well.
> 
> Jon
> 
>

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 01/31/2016 05:18 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Both of the above have minimum orders for me that are quite costly for a
> 10 pak of anything in the transistor 10 cent to 5 dollar price range.
Hmmm, I guess I order enough stuff at a time that I totally 
forgot there's a minimum order!
But, if you have to pay shipping, it doesn't make sense to 
order just a couple small components in one order.

>   Digikey is slightly better, but not enough to spend
> hours  wading thru the selections while still hiding the important data.
Digi-Key's parametric search engine seems to be the BEST out 
there! They could improve it by having RANGES to match by, 
but it really works well.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Jon Elson]

On 01/31/2016 11:10 PM, John Dammeyer wrote:
> In Canada we pay in Canadian dollars and the prices of the parts are
> suitably inflated past just the exchange rate.  There is no minimum and
> shipping is a flat $8.  I'm on Vancouver Island and FedEx delivers the
> Digikey stuff overnight unless there's been some sort of weather delay.
> There is no shipping charge if the order is over $200.
HUH!  I always have to pay for shipping, and I recently made 
a $2800 order from Digi-Key.
I wonder what I'm doing wrong?
>
> Digikey also has a really good service that puts any quantity onto a reel
> for an extra charge; called a digi-reel.  If I'm making 100 pieces a product
> and I need 3 of a particular capacitor I can order 320 devices on a reel
> instead of 3000 pieces.  My Pick and Place supplier likes it.  No screwing
> around with strips of 50 or 100 where the first 25 have to be discarded for
> the leader.  I like it because there's less effort in manufacturing and I'm
> usually left with a few parts for the next prototype.
>
The Digi-reel adds $7 to the cost of the parts.  One 
advantage of my Philips CSM-84 is the feeders don't require 
and trailer and you can thread them (without Digi-reel or 
anything special) with just a little fiddling so you only 
lose 2 parts.  Once threaded, you splice the cover tape with 
masking tape to a piece of old cover tape you have kept in 
reserve.  I'd really have a problem with dumping 25 parts of 
each type when threading the machine!

Some other outfits splice leader to the tapes, and I usually 
end up just ripping them off, as they put this brass 
perforated splice thing over the sprocket holes, and it is 
so much thicker than the tape that it won't feed.

Jon

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[Emc-users] Well, thats the end of aliexpress.com for me

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings;

I had asked about them prior to ordering some hexfet transistors from 
their site.

The cro-magnun filling the order has no clue about the care and feeding 
of mosfet transistors, so the 10 pack I ordered were arranged as 2 rows 
of 5, with the legs interdigitated, bound in scotch tape as a slab to 
fit nicely in a China Post envelope.  But no provision for static 
absorbing, no shorting wires, or any of that black anti-static foam was 
used. I did get the first one cut loose, leaving the tape until such 
time as I could grab the legs with damp fingers before removing the rest 
of the tape.  I was not so lucky with the 2nd, so I dropped the packet 
into a container of somewhat dirty water to control the static while I 
untangled the next 3. The rest were wrapped in foil & put away.

Then they wanted feedback, been pestering me about it nearly every day 
for a week so of course they sent an html encoded message with no text. 
The 244 character long URL did not surive the trip so it didn't work, no 
<> wrapped around it to make it a valid link.  So I replied to the 
originating address giving them a small piece of my mind that I can 
still spare. KMail of course stripped the html, leaving only the 
spamassassin report defining all the reasons it landed in my spam 
folder.

And just for good measure, included  in the To: 
column.  And that bounced instantaneously with the message that I have 
no account there. By the RFC's as IUI, that MUST BE a valid address.

Bottom line is that I will not purchase any more semi-conductors from 
them. Buyer beware if you do.  I won't.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

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