The slow boat from China is either getting slower, or I’m getting more impatient. Either way, it is impeding my momentum and it seems like whenever there is a key part that I need, it is always the last to come.
I kept checking Digi-Key for parts, most of the prices are pretty good but they don’t come close to China prices, especially in small quantities but there’s something to be said for getting things delivered in days instead of weeks (or months in some cases).
I’ve ordered stuff from Digi-Key before, but I’ve always wanted to get the best bang for my buck. The pricing drops of pretty quickly, but I have to resist the urge to get 10,000 of each value of capacitor and resistor that I need.
For the quantities that I need right now I’m not going to get the free shipping at $200, but it looks like for most things it is only $8 and when you average it out it becomes relatively insignificant.
Here’s the cool part, I was using the BOM manager to keep track of parts and quantities but when I finally decided it was time to order they have this cool feature where you can quote different multiples of the BOM items for your cart, so I checked 10x, 50x and 100x and found a good threshold and pulled the trigger.
Overall I’m pretty happy with it, I will be less hesitant to do it in the future. I can’t keep waiting four to six weeks for things to show up from China just to save what ends up being less than a buck or two per board.