Maxim IC frustration - hard to find components

Maxim isn't aiming for your market. They design these chips and hope someone orders a GAZILLION. The rest never go anywhere.

Don't worry. They make it equally impossible for large companies.

They don't carry them because Maxim doesn't make (perhaps design) them unless there is a huge demand.

Exactly. Go elsewhere.

I have been the same route with a Li-Ion charger design about three years back. Having done the rounds of chip types we - like you - settled quite quickly on the Maxim product for its functionality. Unfortunately Maxim want to remain strictly a manufacturer, and the distribution chain which hangs off their coat-tails isn't the most small-customer--focussed system you'll find. Here in Australia the "official" distributor (Arrow) won't even break the factory MOQ. We were fortunate that we located one offshore (NZ actually) Maxim reseller who did carry the required IC and who actually broke the FMOQ down to something sensible - ten off. Otherwise we would have had to compromise our design objective by choosing another chip/supplier combination - and Arrow also represent LT here :-(

(snip chip description)

We checked several offshore suppliers. Maxim in Singapore looked promising but the unzudders were a tad more responsive and I found their "quaint" version of the English language easier to deal with that the Asian version.

Back to the web, check out their food chain ALL the way down, and you may just strike it lucky.

That's why I just don't even bother to consider that Maxim exists anymore when looking for chips.

What a great testimonial for cool parts. What a great warning to stay the hell away!!! The bean counters (always a very bad sign) at Maxim simply chose to ignore the massive collection of products that start small, and then build big. Sadly, it's at their peril, because even big boys recognize a failed approach and steer clear, for fear they'll choose a part and after a year or two find it discontinued by the same bean-counter mentality.

Either you orient yourself towards your customer, or you don't.

You must be new here.

Old joke: "How much are you asking for tomatoes." "50 cents a pound." "50 cents a pound?!--the guy down the road said his were only 35." "Why didn't you buy them there?" "He was out of tomatoes." "Ah, that's different. When I'm out, mine are only 25 cents a pound." . . Interesting how you put sci.electronics.design twice in the To: line.

Yet I have had Maxim sales guys tell me -- with straight faces -- that Maxim never obsoletes a design.

As far as I can tell this is true -- the just don't make a run until they have orders for 50000 pieces.

There are a few Maxim parts that just cannot be lived without; for those you need to order a years supply a year in advance. Then just wait -- when the other 49800 get ordered they'll start building your parts.

Hmmm....I have said the same thing a number of times - and got a lot of static.

Unless it's a 1-off you can build with a sample...!

I had a long conversation with the reps for Maxim whilst at my last job, perhaps 4 years ago, and specifically asked them about the : 'We don't care about you unless you order a million and accept 16 week lead times' attitude. They assured me that they really had reformed, but the reality of the situation is they have not.

My supply chain here has specifically asked I not use Maxim devices as they find it nigh on impossible to get the parts. I find this sad and amusing as Maxim sends me their 'engineering journal' touting their great parts, but they just don't seem to want to sell them.

As for samples, you can get them, but you'll get the third degree over it (don't want to give anything away too easily, do we).

As Win noted, it's silly to ignore the small customer that could become a large customer. That's *precisely* how TI has now re-oriented itself, and they are now posting record profits.

TI competes directly with Maxim (and has second sourced a lot of their parts), and I find the support superb. Even though dev kits are nominally $49 - $99 for most stuff, my FAEs get them to me for nothing, because they *want me to design their parts in* and they know I won't if I have a supply problem.

Contrasts in suppliers, indeed.

Cheers

PeteS

..and precisely how Microchip have always been, and are now the biggest 8-bit micro vendor - ISTR reading somwehere that no one customer makes up more than 3% of their sales.

Yeah- but you're that Clarence nutcase troll...how's the speech impediment coming along.

That's a bunch of bull, you're not paying attention.

Maxim is not making them because the market is using a superior alternative, get a clue.

In message , dated Mon, 7 Aug 2006, Fred Bloggs writes

Well, that's true. Maxim doesn't seem to be making them at all.

Hello Pete,

Or, to put it succinctly: If you don't orient yourself towards the customer, somebody else will. However, it usually requires an upper management change to truly understand that and most of all, live it.

Samples usually aren't the problem. The problems I found were when my clients wanted to order the first reels and all they heard at the other end of the phone line was some hard swallowing.

So far I have only designed out Maxim parts, mostly because of serious logistics problems. I then always try my best to find a jelly bean solution where every part in it is cheap and has half a dozen sources.

Advice to the OP: Learn how to do things without panacea chips, learn discrete designs. It's amazing what you can do these days. Discrete solutions are often significantly lower in cost than that nice cool chip and also not larger in real estate. The only downside is you'd have to deal with 0402 parts or smaller and eyes don't get better with age.

That's what many EU manufacturers do not understand. It is also the reason why I typically don't use their parts anymore in designs and why I wouldn't buy their stock.

Not my (limited) experience - I've used Maxim Direct in the UK and it has always worked well.

I agree with everything you say here, with an addition. There is _very_ little, if anything, that Maxim makes that can not be done [at least as well] with devices from another manufacturer. Those other manufacturers are reaping the benefit of Maxim's short sightedness, imo. That goes for just about all manufacturers, obviously.

Power, thermal management, serial drivers, hotswap - you name it, there are at least 3 competitors in the majority of what they make, although not always fit/form/function compatible. That makes little difference at original design though.

I must sadly agree abut EU manufacturers too - I would use them, but I just can't get them to understand that I am not going to buy 10k of something for a prototype. So they lose the design. I don't know if that's your experience with them; it certainly is mine, in general.

Cheers

PeteS

"Fred Bloggs" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@nospam.com...

There's a bit of a teaser ;)

Power TI, Linear, National, Analog devices, to name a few. All these have products equal or superior to Maxim.

Battery charging. See the list above. I use a BQ24103 [TI] in a couple of products, and it works exactly as advertised.

There are, of course, many other manufacturers - these are just the really big outfits.

As an example on price, I am using the TPS65020 as the regulator for a PXA based design. 3 switchers, 2 LDOs, multiple pin-assignable default settings, I2C controllable Vout. Budgetary $3.75 / 1k qtys. That's pretty competitive as far as I can find.

Want a highend controller that will handle 10A load steps without even a hiccup? Try the LTC1735. Not the cheapest, but a damn good piece of work.

No - there is nothing that Maxim makes that others can't do just as well (perhaps with the addition of a few external components on occasion, but that goes both ways).

Cheers

PeteS