Mouser is quoting 72-week lead time for a 1N4148 from Diodes Inc | Hacker News Reader

Mouser is quoting 72-week lead time for a 1N4148 from Diodes Inc

mouser.com

32 pointsdragontamer17 comments

Mouser has a through hole very similar part 1N4148TA from onsemi / Fairchild - Stock status 435,824 Can Ship Immediately $19.00 for 1000 of them.

It's not that you can't get parts, you'll likely need to be flexible in packaging. If your surface mount design only needs a few diodes, and you can handle the extra height, you should be able to manually place and solder then glue them to not stress the pads. Obviously this isn't optimal for production runs.

For someone used to just building with the parts available in the parts bins, it's no big deal. For a highly optimized, no stock, just in time manufacturer, your supply chain just became a noose. If you have sufficient other projects, you could idle that project and wait for parts to come in, and focus on something else.

One technique I have used for this is to merge the footprint of two substitutable parts, if someone has a name for this please let me know. I adore manufactures that stick to the same footprint for lots of parts, or have the 1-4 version be a linear replication. I'd love to see more regularity and programmability, so one could have programmable resistor and capacitor arrays.

Situation: there are 14 competing standards. "14?! Ridiculous! We need to create one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases." "Yeah!" Situation: there are 15 competing standards. -- https://xkcd.com/927/

Its not so much that you can't get the same part in the same form factor: but the markups are insane. We're looking at a 400%+ price swing if you order a 1N4148 from Vishay.

The Diode Inc. price is still elevated from what a 1N4148 "should" cost. Seeing the price spike everywhere else is worrisome.

---------

That being said: I can imagine some poor sap with some tightly regulated circuitry where they wouldn't be allowed to change manufacturers (see: cars), because every part is technically safety critical.

If you tested, and proven safety, with the Diode Inc. 1N4148, you can't just switch over to Vishay 1N4148.

On some other discussion forum, I was informed that the supply chain crisis is growing in the electronics world. The 1N4148 diode is a very common part, and is beginning to increase in price dramatically.

Given the general discussion of "semiconductor shortage" going on, I feel like this Mouser.com page shows off just how bad things are getting these days.

The 1N4148 diode is still available from other suppliers, but to see a common "jellybean" part like this suddenly start to have supply-chain issues (albeit: only from one manufacturer: Diode Inc) is worrisome to me.

Does anyone else have experience in this field? What's your experiences here? What's going on with less common parts? Are you able to source your components still? Anyone forced to change their designs because of shortages?

Can anyone speak to the details of what is happening in the supply chain for this particular part series? (1N4148 [1])

The market seems very bullish on the manufacturer [2], Diodes Incorporated. Over the past six months their stock price has gone from around $72 to $99. [3] If lead times are over a year, wouldn't it make sense that a competitor will eventually step in and take some of that market share? If these were high-gate chips, I would understand a barrier to entry might protect Diodes Inc., but for something as simple as a diode I don't understand how they can lock up the market.

[1] https://www.mouser.com/c/semiconductors/discrete-semiconduct...

[2] https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/nasdaq-diod-consen...

[3] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DIOD

This is so called jelly bean part, everyone makes it and there are still plenty from other manufacturers

https://eu.mouser.com/c/semiconductors/discrete-semiconducto...

The "Jellybean" parts are the parts where you "don't really care about the specs", so you just buy one of the cheapest ones available.

As such, Jellybean parts, like 1N4148, are usually extremely cheap. They have high volume, they're almost always in stock (sans current market conditions), and are relatively consistent across manufacturers.

What we're seeing is an unprecedented spike in prices, and an incredible lengthening of lead-time.

A diode is a semiconductor, but the most __primitive__ and cheapest design ever made. Literally the first semiconductor discovered back in the late 1800s. 1N4148 is the cheapest design. To see a shortage hit this part is rather historic and incredible.

I would compare it to shortages of 22LR ammunition caused by spikes in demand (primarily resulting from recent presidential elections). Manufacturers do not want to invest in increasing supply during such a spike, because their margin is practically nothing. The cost of starting a new factory line probably will not be paid off before the spike subsides.

Omg am I finally going to profit on all my unused bulk electronics parts orders?

It's funny. In 2019 I did a couple of larger personal orders for play and upcoming projects. I got @50 STM32 (a few different), and 25 Giga RISCV chips. The order was a less than 250$USD for the uC's, some memory, and logics.

I use them sparingly now, and try not to goof them up!

Nice. I'm in the same boat - I ordered a couple of hundred ATSAMD parts that I didn't end up using, and now they are going for almost 2x what I paid due to 50+week lead times. Crazy times!

I do component purchasing for a small electronics manufacturer. It's been a hellish time looking for alternatives, trying to compare crappy data sheets (that often miss key specs) and trying to get one part from multiple sources.

Octopart has been key in this process but it can't fix supply chain issues like these. Luckily there are drop-in alternatives available for the 1N4148.

Shortages on specialty parts like high power transistors - we often don't have a drop in alternative and end up having to redesign whole PCBs around a different part.

There are other component issues too - long lead times and ridiculous pricing on connectors (amphenol, huber + suhner), but that wasn't too unusual before the pandemic.

Maybe this is an acceptable substitute? - it's the same package and seems to have very similar characteristics according to the datasheets. And lots of them in stock:

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Diodes-Incorporated/BAV...

The 1N4148 is __supposed__ to be less than a penny each.

That part you listed is an "acceptable substitute" at ~3.5-cents @quantity 3000, or roughly 350% higher price than the 1N4148 "Jellybean" is supposed to be at.

Aka: the "I don't really care about the specs and just want a diode" diode.

---------

1N4148 diodes are available from many other manufacturers: but from a 400%ish markup.

I have noticed that past few months that many smd discrete components are very low in number at many suppliers. You will see quantifies of less than 10k (a reel) of 402 package resistors. I feel that many OEM's are hording both CPUs, uC's and other support semiconductors as well as some of the common discretes.

76 weeks now

Reply on news.ycombinator.com