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Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

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Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#221

Post by sh34r »

ISL wrote: post #62

McMaster is a great choice when you can value your time. There is no comparison shipping. You need an industrial tricycle that gets the job done? Great. Add an industrial tricycle to your cart. Unless there is a meaningful difference between models, there will be only one choice. It will be curated and it will do what you generally expect it to do. You'll pay more than you can get it for elsewhere, but it will do the…

It’s arguably similar to the value proposition Apple brings to a lot of their customers. Time is money, and having things just work the way they’re supposed to seems to get rarer and rarer. Or maybe I’m just getting older, I dunno.

I wish we had more firms that still valued quality and proper customer service in this world. Too much chinesium junk out there these days, in a race to the bottom that everyone loses.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#222

Post by dghlsakjg »

wlesieutre wrote: post #182
xyzzyz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next time he’ll buy $20 worth of bolts and pay $80.

What's a good place for well priced bolts if I'm not worried about next day shipping but need them to not be made of pot metal?

Call a local machine shop, mechanic or welder and ask. Almost every town and city has a store that specializes in hardware for tradies that has better pricing and selection than HD or Ace or homeowner stores.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#223

Post by sh34r »

guywithahat wrote: post #90
fmajid wrote: post #85

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.

Never mind industrial uses. It’s nearly impossible to find the right sized bolt or screw for a basic residential task on Amazon. For example, to replace a furniture screw that was lost during a move.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#224

Post by xyzzyz »

wlesieutre wrote: post #216
elil17 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you finding pot metal bolts? Your best option should be anything from Ace/Home Depot/Lowes. The matte finish ones are zinc galvanized, that’s just the protective coating. They are made of carbon steel and are graded according to standards set by organizations like SAE. Hardware stores will have grade 2 bolts for the most part (or the metric equivalents). These will be made with weaker steel and will be cut…

Haven't got pot metal bolts, just thinking of some machine screw assortments I've bought on Amazon. They've worked fine for 3d printing projects, but makes me wary of fasteners from unknown sources if strength could matter. Hardware store has been my go to, is that the reference people are using for saying McMaster bolts are 4x overpriced?

Yeah, if you can buy what you want at big box hardware store, then do, prices won't get much lower than that, and you'll get something that's certified to a standard. McMaster is useful if your time is worth too much to waste it on trips to Home Depot, or if you want something less standard.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#225

Post by steve_adams_86 »

gruez wrote: post #44
pGuitar wrote: post #14

Earlier 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. I'm not so sure about this. I'm not a prime member and I frequently get orders delivered before the estimated delivery date. On the other hand I also see instances where amazon takes suspiciously long to ship something. A charitable explanation might be that their logistics capacity (eg. planes or vans) is limited, so if you're not a p…

Likewise, Amazon almost always delivers to me before their estimate and the estimate is very standard. No one else I order from is doing better.

I avoid using Amazon, so as you can imagine, I don’t have a prime membership. It doesn’t seem to matter.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#226

Post by iancmceachern »

loonster wrote: post #183
iancmceachern wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that's all already done for you in the mcmaster add in for solidworks.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#227

Post by pySSK »

wlesieutre wrote: post #182
xyzzyz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next time he’ll buy $20 worth of bolts and pay $80.

What's a good place for well priced bolts if I'm not worried about next day shipping but need them to not be made of pot metal?

Fastenal is good for wholesale, and if you're lucky enough to have a location closeby, you can have it next day or even same day.

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#228

Post by NavinF »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #208

I was very confused when Ben Krasnow pronounced McMaster with a "mick" at the beginning. For 10+ years of my English education nobody bothered to explain that Mc is "mack", but sometimes it's pronounced "mick". I was aware something is going on when Tyler McVicker introduced himself with "mick". English teachers usually have a typical repertoire of their pet details like schwa and so on, but seems there's a blind spo…

Hmm isn't McMaster pronounced just like McDonald's?

Re: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

#229

Post by dghlsakjg »

MPSimmons wrote: post #175
CobaltFire wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use these in military aviation across the world. Stupidly useful when you’ve got 100+ lbs of tools to run out to a down aircraft that needs fixed to make a mission. Also in shipyards, for similar reasons.

I can't talk about details but I know of large industry-leading aerospace manufacturers who don't use MMC for flight parts because they need batch-level part tracking for failure investigations, and MMC doesn't offer that.

Pretty sure the USAF doesn’t care too much about the batch number for the tricycle the tech uses to get to the plane…

But I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a government auditor complained about it too

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