Yet another reason to avoid PartMiner

My Radio Shack remodled a couple years ago and I found the new layout the best ever, except I miss when the stores had a regular stereo listening area setup. They had nice isles and had soldering stuff, cleaners right there in the middle of things.

They closed this summer.

greg

Yeah, but one can argue that -- these days -- it usually requires *selling* to get someone to purchase a cell phone, whereas for something like an LED the employee is almost always just going to be an *order taker*.

But the next guy that comes in the store spends 1/2 hour asking the employee why he can't connect the LEDs to

120VAC, before he spends the $3.

Then of course, returns the defective parts the next day.

-Hershel

"Hershel" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@enews3.newsguy.com:

How many buyers were really that bad? Surely not enough to dent the income that badly? I think it's arguable that assumptions like that lead to an impression that stocking small parts leads to being beset with timewasters, and that might be a big reason why people stopped stocking them. That says far more about the management than about the customers. I accept that there is no smoke without fire, but the fire is usually far smaller than the smoke. Besides, isn't pricing LED at $3 for a pack of 5 asking for trouble? All the sensible and well-informed clients are buying elsewhere.

The first rule of high street spares and parts is: keep them in stock. That might not apply to special parts but once it gets to the point where a 16V

1000 µF capacitor or an LM317T regulator can't be bought at a moment's notice at any time the shop is open, that's when the business goes belly up with all speed unless it gives up trying and becomes a different kind of shop, in which case it should make way for another firm who will take on that trade. Looks like some of the small mail order firms might soon start doing what Maplin and Tandy/Radio Shack were doing. I guess history repeats itself.

That's all as may be, but I really can't see any mileage in offering recovered parts to the service industry, or any such thing spawning a revival in the ' mend and make do ' mentality of Joe Punter. I would not dream of fitting a second hand recovered laser, or any other component come to that. It's simply not practical when you've got to be able to offer a warranty on the repair. Neither would I waste the time recovering components for commercial use. It would just not make economic sense. The only way that recycling of electronic equipment is going to have any serious impact, is in recovery of the base materials for reuse in manufacturing new goods. However, like wind turbines and battery cars, the energy budget advantage for doing even this, is dubious. Far better my original contention that manufacturers should be obliged to pass on spare parts at cost plus handling, not cost plus handling plus 5000% profit, thus stopping the stuff being prematurely scrapped in the first place...

Arfa

No, my view is current. We build products to RoHS, and we now document the quickest and safest ways to disassemble our products for recycling. In most cases, our SMT boards are not economical to repair; the labor cost of removing one PLCC package, or God forbid, a BGA, very rapidly approaches our cost for a new, fully populated and tested PCB from our turnkey vendor.

It's cheaper and easier to shred the entire product, case & all, skim the plastics off to make park benches, and throw the rest in the crucible and separate out any metals of value.

Should China become unwilling to take on the work, there are dozens of developing economies in Asia and Africa that would be happy to take it off their hands.

--Gene

Just out of curiosity, Gene, do you do any failure analysis to determine the cause before shredding the evidence? Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:

SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators: Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:

That was one of the better parts of the Maplin job but it certainly did take a lot of time. I didn't mind on slow week days but on a busy Saturday when someone hands you a melted mass of black plastic and wants you to identify and replace a part now absent from a smoking crater then it becomes a bit tedious.

Good job satisfaction though if you manage to actually teach a customer something because you know he's going to go bragging to his mates about his new found knowledge, even if it is just calculating a voltage drop resistor for a LED.

I didn't say we don't investigate, it just isn't cost-effective to repair the board by hand, rather than pull a new one from stock.

We do investigate hen we can. Some of our boards are potted for intrinsic safety, and it's pretty difficult to remove. When a product is returned because it was struck by lightning, or flooded, we don't usually investigate much!

The failures we see in-house have been due to improper handling (bad wrist straps), correctly marked SMT resistors that are the wrong value, and an occasional defective EEPROM.

--Gene

Thanks, Gene,

Is it correct to assume the in-house problems are detected before shipment? Do you do a burnin where you run a self-test program?

Regards,

Mike Monett

Antiviral, Antibacterial Silver Solution:

SPICE Analysis of Crystal Oscillators: Noise-Rejecting Wideband Sampler:

We have board-level tests that are either performed at the vendor or by us prior to product assembly. The finished product usually undergoes further performance/accuracy checks. This catches virtually all our defects. We usually don't burn in products unless they have mechanical parts like compressors or pumps that tend to have much higher "infant mortality".

--Gene

pay

c*ck-ups,

to

I was going to reply with some sense, but why bother with effort on these deals - just tell PartsMiner to go and get stuffed. In fact, tell them nothing, just move on. There are plenty of other parts suppliers just waiting for real business, you don't need these arseholes - just boycott them. RS are no better. I have an account with them, but, in fact, even if you have an account, they're not interested ... Johnny