Transcript ECE 445 Buying Parts

ECE 445 Buying Parts
Brady Salz
September 14, 2015
WHERE TO?
Parts can be obtained from a variety of sources, but namely:
 Senior Design Lab
 ECEB Service Shop
 ECE Store (Supply Center)
 Individual Vendors (Texas Instruments, Analog Devices)
 Small Distributors (Sparkfun, Adafruit)
 Industrial Distributors (Digikey, Adafruit)
FREE
 Stuff in the lab is “free to use”
– But not “free to keep”
– Need to check out larger/more expensive items
 This also applies to the service shop
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Full of IC’s
Full of passives
Full of interconnects
Full of wire (now also in the lab)
 Many companies offer free samples of their parts
– TI, Analog Devices, Linear, Coilcraft, Maxim, etc
BUYING PARTS
 Each person given a budget of ~$40 in to spend freely
 Can be spent at the ECE Shop or through a different distributor via My.ECE
 After that, on your own
– Lump it under the “textbook fee”
 Looking into something very expensive?
– Ask your TA, case-by-case basis
MY.ECE
BOM Management
 Buying a resistor may be challenging
– Digikey lists 350,000 as of last night
 Lots of neat startups recently for BOM tools
– Parts.io
– Octopart
– Sandsquid
 Might be overkill, might be worth checking out
TRUSTED DISTRIBUTORS
 Primarily Digikey and Mouser
 Others include: Allied, Avnet, Jameco, MCM Electronics, Newark
 Hobbyist: Sparkfun, Adafruit, Pololu, Tindie
 Ones I would NOT recommend for this class:
– Aliexpress, DealExtreme, ElectroDragon, Ebay
– Futurlec, GE Tech, LedQuotations, Tayda
– Shipping speed not reasonable on scale we expect you to move
PCB PURCHASES
 You are expected to design and solder a PCB in this class
 Service Shop will mill your design out for you for free
 Limitations
– Two sided
– No plated vias
– No soldermask/silkscreen
BUYING YOUR OWN PCB
Pick two.
PRICE
QUALITY
SPEED
TRUSTED PCB SERVICES
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Advanced Circuits
OSHpark
DirtyPCBs
Seeed Studio
 Please ask your TA before using a different service
 Most often, shipping time doesn’t fit into course timeline
Questions?