Just curious, are images intentionally all grayscale? Or just a legacy thing.
Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
181–190 of 501 posts
Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#182Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Not at all. My rate is very high, so saving a day of my time saves them way more. The burn rate on some of these projects is hundreds of thousands, millions a day. Saving time when your on the critical path (as mechanical design typically is) is worth that much. Once the design is finished there is a whole army of manufacturing engineers and sourcing folks that can drive the cost down. That's not the niche that mcmas…
If it's a commonly used item, it would be much more efficient to pay an entry level CAD guy to draw up a parametric screw part. Add in toolsolids of all the subtracts that the component will do (taps, CBore, clearance), and supplier call outs. It starts to become efficient.
Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Time is money and buying from McMaster has always been faster and easier than any other site. I also have yet to get an incorrect item.
I have had an incorrect CAD model from them. (Which they fixed when I brought it to their notice). Once burned, twice shy.
Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#185This doesn't go into the actual mechanics of finalizing your order, which is incredibly well done. I've only actually ordered from McMaster 3 times and don't have a need for anything right now so I might be getting details wrong, but basically, the "items in your cart" page has a shipping address and payment method pre-filled, and you just hit "order" and that's it. What's in stock, what ships when, etc. is all clear…
> I also like their parametric search. If you type '1/4"-20 screw', the page goes to the overview of that screw type AND populates the "machine-readable" parameters on the left side with what you typed. This is something I wish more e-commerce sites would grok. I go to Lowes and type in 1/2" 10-32 stainless bolt in the search box. Now I get a search result page, with filter parameters on the left side. Great. There's…
Amazon is shockingly bad at parametric searches. Products are routinely miscategorized, often ridiculously so, and frequently have missing or woefully inaccurate parameters (like treating a bundle of four 16 GB SD cards as "64 GB").
Even when Amazon's product parameters are correct, their filters are frequently outdated -- for example, their category for "internal hard drives" has a single filter for "4 TB & Above", even though capacities as high as 20 TB are available. They also have a filter for 1500 RPM (not 15k!) drives, which I'm pretty sure have been out of production for longer than Amazon has sold hard disks.
Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#186I love McMaster, but also want to give a shout out to their competitor, grainger. Similarly excellent UI. One benefit that I take advantage of is free delivery to their local warehouse for in person pickup. I don't know why more companies don't serve the customer with this.
Grainger isn't directly a competitor as they focus on "everything" but they're amazing. You can pay them to open the local branch at 2 AM on a Sunday if you need a part and they have it in stock.
Wow, Thats crazy, but as it should be. Hope the employees get OT.
Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#187Mechanical 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…
I even buy home supplies (air filters, cleaning, etc) from them. They're wonderful.
Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Almost everything is next-day delivery, Could it be that you live next to one of their warehouses? On the other hand, Amazon delays orders on purposes if you aren't a Prime member.
> On the other hand, Amazon delays orders on purposes if you aren't a Prime member. Sounds like a conflict of interest if they literally start transit then delay at some point. Like maybe retailers shouldn't be able to own shipping
I am no logistics engineer but I always figured it was a batching operation.
you delay for up to a week, this lets you build efficient shipping batches.
Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
#189Aside from their very good and intuitive site, McMaster's delivery speed is excellent. I use them for parts for my 'non profit' old car addiction, orders appear ridiculously fast in stout cardboard boxing. Perfect gold standard ecommerce imo