Amazon.com is pretty much the name in on-line retailers. You can buy books, videos, and even power tools there, but did you know that they have an Industial and Scientific material store as well? It’s been open for a little more than a year, and you can find some pretty crazy stuff there.
When I went looking for clear PVC pipe for a spud gun on-line, many of the sites I’ve found seem a little shady. They may offer a good price, but how do Ii know whether I’ll actually get what I ordered? Amazon adds credence and a sense of reliability in my opinion. And the beta store offers a wide range of products including bulk fasteners, steel tubing, and just about every type of plastic you can think of.
My favorite feature is that you can add items to your Amazon wish list. If you’re hard to shop for, you can just point people there and show them exactly what you’d like. Rather than an ugly sweater for Christmas, you can get that piece of titanium tubing you’ve been drooling over.
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9 Responses to Material Source: Amazon’s Industrial And Scientific Beta
Leave a Reply to Stuart Deutsch Cancel reply
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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.
Re:They dont even have metric bolts in there yet
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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
In their defense it is a beta. I also like the plastic selection.
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/
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.
Amazon has a long way to go before challenging McMaster-Carr.
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.
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
When it comes to this kind of stuff McMaster Carr (http://mcmaster.com) can’t be beat!