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 –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 SPEED QUALITY

TRUSTED PCB SERVICES  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?