![]() ![]() First you enter your fake company name then you enter a fake purchase order so that your fake purchasing department can add it to their system then you schedule a delivery date so that your fake shipping/receiving center is ready for your incoming parts… and so-on and so-forth. If you’ve ever ordered from a place like Misumi, you’ll probably remember those curbside bumps in the checkout process. Actually placing an order with McMaster-Carr is easy–almost too easy. Bullet Checkout that Cuts to the ChaseĪnd the convenience goes one step further. For the hardware hacker, no minimum quantity is a convenience that saves us from filling our basement with the sins of ordering bulk. Apart from ordering, let’s say, a 25 pack of “jellybean” parts like screws and nuts, most orders wont conscript you into a minimum purchase of 99 extra parts. McMaster-Carr has no such minimum quantity. Nope, I didn’t need 1000 custom standoffs but, by golly, I sure hope my friends want to fistfight over the other 996. Nevertheless, with a vendor like RAF, we hobbyists quickly bump into the dreaded minimum-order roadblock. ![]() ![]() For your even more niche screw tastes that they can’t satisfy, I’d suggest RAF Hardware. Yellow journalism aside, McMaster-Carr has almost every type of screw. For the niche user with refined tastes, there’s also vented, wire-locking, and sealing screws. Did you need set screws, shoulder screws, or wood screws? Oh yeah? How long do you need them? What thread type? Countersunk or Buttonhead? Metric or Jurassic? And that’s just the typical settings. While your everyday Home Depot has many types of screws, McMaster-Carr has every type of screw, or close to it. McMaster-Carr isn’t just an online replacement for your home improvement store. Half a Million Componentsįirst off, their inventory variety is massive - as in: over 550,000 unique components. Let’s take a quick tour of what’s on the table. With such a ubiquitous name, we might think they’d do more, but that’s it! What’s special about their cause is that they’ve built an extremely well-tuned system for getting parts into the hands of engineers. So what is it? What exactly puts McMaster-Carr into the vocabulary of every single engineer who’s ever built something in their career? Well, simply put, McMaster-Carr shines as a one-stop hardware shop with a massive inventory, an easy-to-browse online catalog, and a speedy turnaround time from the moment you push the buy button to the moment parts land on your door. Getting to Know Your Future One-Stop Shop Grab another cup of coffee as we take you on a tour of the good and good-grievances of McMaster-Carr. Since we, the McMaster-Carr sages, are forever doomed to stuff our desk drawers with those characteristic yellow baggies till the end of time, we thought we’d give an intro to the noobs that are just beginning to flex their muscles with this almighty resource. When used poorly, we find nothing but overpriced stock components in oversized shipping boxes. When used wisely, this source of mechanical everything brings us a world of fast parts at our fingertips. Today, this article is for those of us who have yet to receive that enlightenment. Those of us who’ve already been enlightened by the McMaster-Carr can design wonders with a vocabulary of parts just one day away at the click of a button. Why? Despite the price, something makes them too useful to ignore by everyday DIY enthusiasts. Yet their name is ubiquitous among the hacker community. For one, they’re primarily a B2B company and, for two, their prices aren’t cheap. For the penny-pinching basement hacker, McMaster-Carr seems like a weird go-to resource for hardware.
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