41–50 of 175 posts
It is strange that the article refers to McMaster as a B2B site. It works just as well for consumers.
I wouldn't say so, I had to purchase the min qty. of 200 for a screw set I could only find on there that was available in reasonable time. I made use of 4 and have 196 left over
A huge advantage of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is the 3D models - for nearly every fastener, and for certain other products, you can instantly grab a 3D model and bring it right into your CAD design. As far as I know no one else offers this, definitely not at the scale McMaster's dataset offers. An annoyance of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is how they don't show you the shipping cost until after transaction…
As an industrial engineer, most of my vendors offer this. I can get 3D CAD for robot arms, grippers, IO blocks, motors, cameras, enclosures, valves, cylinders, and just about everything else that goes in my machines. However, you're right that these don't have the same scale that McMaster does; they're selling the huge variety of nuts and bolts that bring these separate vendors together.
One of the underrated parts of this kind of CAD offering is that you can test out 3D printed parts directly from their CAD. Not sure if you're accurately understanding their otherwise very helpful documentation on the gear modulus of that thousand dollar hardened, ground steel rack-and-pinion? Download the step file and print it in a few bucks of PLA. No, it won't actually be strong enough to move that 3-ton casting even once, but you can trivially check that the meshing works as you expect.
A huge advantage of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is the 3D models - for nearly every fastener, and for certain other products, you can instantly grab a 3D model and bring it right into your CAD design. As far as I know no one else offers this, definitely not at the scale McMaster's dataset offers. An annoyance of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is how they don't show you the shipping cost until after transaction…
> As far as I know no one else offers this, definitely not at the scale McMaster's dataset offers. As an industrial engineer, most of my vendors offer this. I can get 3D CAD for robot arms, grippers, IO blocks, motors, cameras, enclosures, valves, cylinders, and just about everything else that goes in my machines. However, you're right that these don't have the same scale that McMaster does; they're selling the huge…
I worked at Idealab in Pasadena California. We ordered SO much from them that they would deliver to us (and others in the area) directly and daily. If you had your order in by 10am (11 if you were SUPER lucky and there were a lot of orders to process) the truck would show up at ~2ish. This was 2001... WAY before Amazon Prime 2 day deliver, let alone same day. It was EPIC to design something and have the parts show up hours later.
The other beauty of McMaster is the breadth of their inventory. You could order a safety vest, a billet of Al, a 4x8 sheet of plywood and some screws... all from the same place! One of the software engineers cooked up a web scraper tied to a randomization engine. It would randomly order $100 worth of things on our account each day. He was stopped before it was turned on... but it would have been really fun to see what random stuff showed up on a daily basis. We spent a few lunches laughing about the potential boxes that would have shown up.
A huge advantage of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is the 3D models - for nearly every fastener, and for certain other products, you can instantly grab a 3D model and bring it right into your CAD design. As far as I know no one else offers this, definitely not at the scale McMaster's dataset offers. An annoyance of McMaster I didn't see enumerated is how they don't show you the shipping cost until after transaction…
Does it offer a "I will know it when I see it" function? Sometimes I have in mind a specific tool or accessory, but not its specs necessarily.
It's because they'll have your order at your door next day for an extremely reasonable cost of shipping. Nobody excels at pick, pack, and ship like McMaster-Carr. Where they can be a little tough is searching for things you don't know the exact name for. I needed screws that have a smooth section to run through a bushing with a fairly tight tolerance. You know: turns freely but doesn't rattle. I spent hours looking u…
There's many things to love about the design, but the fact that they use actual anchor tags and override the default behavior with JS is extremely frustrating and makes opening in a new tab impossible. When I'm looking for parts I tend to want to open up several categories or parts across a few tabs and they make it impossible. Horizontal scrolling is also remapped to scroll vertically as well, which breaks the track…
> makes opening in a new tab impossible This has been happening to so many commerce sites for the last several years. It's infuriating. They absolutely hate the idea that you might want to look at several items at once. Anyway, in Firefox I kludge around it by right clicking the tab I'm on, selecting Duplicate Tab, then clicking the item in that new tab. Sometimes you gotta duplicate a lot that way, but it usually wo…
mcmaster, rockauto, digikey, ... don't tell anyone, they'll "modernise" them and fuck it all up.
ULPT: Another thing you can do when you call is just ask "Whats our price on it?" They will ask who you are with. Just mention the name of the largest specialty ship matching the brand of the place you are calling. They almost always have an account. Now just say you'll come and pay and pickup in person. "I'm sending the new guy" Now you just got your car part at the MAP price.