Comments on: Material Source: Amazon’s Industrial And Scientific Beta

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:08:41 +0000

When it comes to this kind of stuff McMaster Carr (http://mcmaster.com) can’t be beat!

By: Eric G.

Eric G. — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:04:30 +0000

the supplier for a large majority fo the items in that section are small parts inc. ( http://www.smallparts.com/ ), going direct to them is a hell of a lot cheaper.

as a side note i’ve used smallparts for other projects in the past they’ve been great

By: Stuart Deutsch

Stuart Deutsch — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:41:15 +0000

To be fair, Amazon isn’t even trying to compete with McMaster Carr. They’re basically a dropshipper for these industrial products and probably spare little or no expense on them.

How many Amazon shoppers would discover or order from any of those 3rd party vendors if not for their Amazon listings? Because of this, Small Parts Inc., and other parties that compete with McMaster in certain product sectors, is definitely benefiting by Amazon’s extended consumer reach.

By: Moe

Moe — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:50:33 +0000

Amazon has a long way to go before challenging McMaster-Carr.

By: Stuart Deutsch

Stuart Deutsch — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 03:36:18 +0000

To date, I have not yet seen an Industry and Scientific product on amazon that was not offered by a 3rd party seller.

Also, Amazon’s plastics selection is mostly due to Small Parts Inc.’s listings. It might be worthwhile to check out a vendor’s site directly see if their selection is any better or if the prices or shipping fees are cheaper.

By: MBrun

MBrun — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:26:08 +0000

Doesn’t Grainger have all this already?
http://www.grainger.com

They always seem to have what I need.

There is also McMaster-Carr too: http://www.mcmaster.com/

You can build lots of FIRST[1] robots with their stuff!

Build More!
Michael

[1] http://www.usfirst.org/

By: Eric Dykstra

Eric Dykstra — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:57:11 +0000

In their defense it is a beta. I also like the plastic selection.

By: PutnamEco

PutnamEco — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 01:06:12 +0000

Re:They dont even have metric bolts in there yet
————————————————————————————

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_ex_p_11_0/103-8572381-3080618?ie=UTF8&rs=16409491&rh=n%3A16310091%2Cn%3A16310171%2Cp%5Fmeasurement%5Fsystem%3AMetric%2Cn%3A16409491

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:07:27 +0000

They dont even have metric bolts in there yet. There is not much value to selling me the stuff I can get at Lowe’s. This will only be useful when they have the hard to find stuff.