161–170 of 501 posts
Completely absurd and I'll never order from them again.
Mechanical Engineer and product designer here. I've been using mcmaster daily for 20 years to do my job. It is definitely the standard by which all others are judged. I'll gladly pay 2, 3, 5, even 10x the price to get it from McMaster. The service, the CAD models, I have what I need the next day. As an example of the level of their service, you can send them a box of loose parts, no part numbers, no markings, and the…
Maybe your customers or employer would like you to save 2, 3, 5, 10x the price… My memories of McMaster from doing my hobbies is that it is outrageously expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And also zero counterfeit products that will burn down your house.
I am increasingly wary of buying things that might be in this category from Amazon.
The counterpoint to this is that a site like Amazon can still succeed to dominate the industry despite being a horrendous mess with nonfunctional search, a horrendous counterfeiting problem, and widespread review fraud. Does take the wind out of the sails of IA/UX purists somewhat.
I feel like the part everyone is ignoring is that McMaster sells a very small breadth of things with incredible depth in its selection. The features people are raving about in this article and thread only make sense in the context of selling bolts for industrial use, and could never be implemented at a place like Amazon.
> McMaster sells a very small breadth of things with incredible depth in its selection.
is not the case. They sell virtually anything anyone in an industrial environment could possibly be interested in. See other comments about "industrial trikes" and feel free to choose some arbitrary thing and try to find it there.
This is the frustrating thing for me, they are objectively very good at what they do, but in a completely unsustainable way.
I can drill down to a specific part for a specific car in seconds, and see pics of the product, part numbers, specs. It’s lovely.
MechE here as well. An alternative to McMaster is Misumi. Misumi is nice because you can order parts that are made to order (imagine a rod with the specific thread and length). No next day shipping like McMaster but being able to buy a custom “off the shelf” part without making a special internal part number is huge (so you don’t need drawings or anything). They’ll ship you a couple books like the signature yellow bo…
> being able to buy a custom “off the shelf” part without making a special internal part number How does that work? I have been searching the internet for stainless steel M8 x 20 set screws with a torx socket, maybe uncommon but straightforward. I have yet to find these anywhere outside of having them manufactured in china by truckload - I need maybe 100.
McMaster has everything (almost)!
I had a question about a bracket and its datasheet. The secretary put me on hold for 45s, and someone with a Japanese accent answered and said he was the lead engineer of that line(?!?!)
Like within 1m total, I had the authoritative answer down to the .002 deg, and the head engineer answering me.
So, I buy Misumi.
I also find McMaster is also in that top list of "Just buy from them and not worry!"