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Comment by iancmceachern | Hacker News Reader

Mechanical Engineer and product designer here. I've been using mcmaster daily for 20 years to do my job. It is definitely the standard by which all others are judged. I'll gladly pay 2, 3, 5, even 10x the price to get it from McMaster. The service, the CAD models, I have what I need the next day. As an example of the level of their service, you can send them a box of loose parts, no part numbers, no markings, and they'll go through it, figure out what's what, and refund you for it. They make it so easy, you just have to do the engineering. Thank you McMaster-Carr.

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Alas, for some reason they only cater to the US market and have no presence in the EU, for example. So while it is possible to order from them, it's rather inconvenient as you need to deal with customs/taxes.

Digi-Key got this right: you can order DDP, which makes things quick & simple.

Incidentally, I am amazed that they don't have a meaningful competitor in the EU. It seems most companies here are stuck in the 80s and dedicate next to zero effort to their web ordering process.

and Canada, though only to business and school addresses only.

Pro tip: Use M.D. after your name and you're a business. I AM an M.D. but friends I've given this advice to over the years have had success in impersonating a business with this title.

Sole proprietorships are businesses. One could just put their name in the “company name” field.

Sometimes there is no company field. In that case go to M.D.

You could also put "Trucking". Joe Blow Trucking

The B2B vacuum of Europe. So many voids to fill, for the ones daring to share product details and, gasp, prices, online.

Yeah what is going on with B2B in Europe and not showing prices? It's absolutely bonkers, I have been renovating my house the past 6 years, and to even get into the stores I had to get a business account (by cheating and using my IT business registration).

None of the websites show prices if you don't have an account, and some of them even check if your business is legit so I just get refused. The one that rejected me also seems to only allow loading goods by fully sized truck so maybe it wasn't going to happen anyway, but it's so strange.

I wonder if it's down to having an opportunity to negotiate the price. It's either that, or things like handling get calculated to fine points - a single screw being more expensive than a box of screws, for example. Shipping is complicated as well. Maybe it's about setting up invoicing accounts as well?

Anyway, lots of barriers, makes you think it's either a requirement that I as a layperson don't understand, or a hole in the market.

That said, what about German electronics parts sites like Conrad or Reichelt?

I'll do you one better: I had to create a verified business account just to download software(ladder logic IDE for a sewage pump) from one such site.

I even got a call from a nice, older gentleman who asked me why do I want a business account and could this be avoided somehow. Funny he should ask.

To me it appears that these companies see presence in the web as a necessary evil and would rather do business the old fashioned way: calling and in-person meetings.

Apparently so far they hadn't had any incentive to change.

They haven't seen any incentive to change, but will grumble about Amazon and point to that as the biggest threat to their business. If they aren't, they should be.

I'd rather do business with anyone BUT Amazon, and its telling I still find myself having to order some bits from them every month.

Even though the EU is one market, it really isn't much of a single market due to language and cultural differences. I've helped B2B companies and most small/medium sized ones want to limit their services to their own (and their country's neighbor's) country. There are a ton of problems related to fake company addresses placing orders and having them delivered at some random company's parking lot. Problems with regards to refunds, and –mot important– it is VERY hard to get the police to do anything about it. The minute it is outside of their jurisdiction, the police just doesn't do anything really.

So, maybe only take prepay for orders outside your 'backyard'?

But yeah for areas that are "old fashioned", what B2B has of experience they lack in getting on with the times.

> Yeah what is going on with B2B in Europe and not showing prices?

Is it that much different from SaaS companies that instead of prices show a "contact sales" button?

But most of those have multiple self-serve tiers (maybe even a free one) below the must-call “enterprise” option.

I mean renovating your house is not B2B so it makes sense they want business registration.

I think they do it because they don't want to bother with small buyers. If people knew how much cheaper the parts are in these companies compared to hobby markets they would all want to buy few pieces to save money. This is not customer they want, they want customers that buy massive quantities.

Minimum order quantities are a standard practice to avoid this problem.

The one that rejected me was a supplier that generally targets larger full construction sites so I totally get it for them. For the rest though, their main audience is definitely normal renovation contractors, and my order sizes are exactly the same as those.

I often use Conrad for its huge collection of small parts (mechanical as well as semiconductors) most of which can be ordered individually, with an interface with lots of filters and easy access to manuals and data sheets. Sometimes their categorization is a bit off, and they don't have CAD files, but it's decent enough.

Conrad is a shitshow in my country.

- Almost nothing is on stock, most items have 10+ weeks backorder time.

- Ridiculously expensive, its common to find 2x prices than in other shops.

- Full with Chinesium crap (but some high quality items too), one can never be sure what they will get.

Its like a shitty Aliexpress

LOL. I discovered Conrad before I found out about AliExpress. I thought AE was a shitty Conrad with much better pricing but slower delivery.

There is misumi but it is not exactly the same market

Musumi is great too, they're cool because they have a lot of semi custom parts like plates with holes in them where you can spec the hole locations, rotary shafts with custom lengths and end finishing, etc.

DDP is probably the only good solution here for most EU customers, but frankly the hassle and expense of doing business in the EU is what keeps most US e-commerce companies from entering the market.

I tried googling DDP but couldn't find it - do you know the URL?

It stands for 'Delivery Duty Paid', i.e. customs charges, import tariffs, taxes, handling charges are included in the price and don't arrive as an unwelcome surprise.

It is a shipping term, it stands for deluvered duty paid. Basically, customs duties are paid by the shipper and the item is delivered directly to the customer. From a logistics perspective it is a massive PITA, but for DTC sales in the EU it's the preferred option.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/delivery-duty-paid.asp

I see a couple other folks jumped in. It’s basically a way to estimate duties and taxes up front so the EU customer knows the full price before they order.

The reality it that most EU customers already know the price before they order (or have a good idea it’s going to be 20% more). But they like to pretend they don’t.

Maybe because the site is hard-coded for the US imperial system?

Quoting the article: «Bolts are commonly specified by their thread size (e.g. 1/4"-20), and their length. I'm looking for a 1/4"-20 x 1" bolt, meaning that the bolt's diameter is 1/4" and its length is 1", so I select these filters.»

Maybe because the site is hard-coded for the US imperial system?

Why not go to the site and take a look. They, obviously, sell both metric and imperial bolts (and everything else).

It's not like Americans don't occasionally need metric bolts.

> It's not like Americans don't occasionally need metric bolts.

It’s becoming a lot more common than not in fact. Automobile industry for example is pretty heavy on using metric bolts / screws. It’s not a recent thing either, a 2004 F-250 I used to have had many (most?) bolts as metric.

The US automotive industry started their metric push in the 1970s, and was mostly done in the 1980s for everything new. There are still a few parts from the 1960s and before that work just fine and so haven't been redesigned (and thus the bracket it goes on in a mix), but if there was ever need to redesign that part it would be all metric.

This only helps the tool makers. I wrench on Japanese and European cars yet every toolset comes with Metric and SAE sets. It seems to only inflate the parts count without giving you more functionality. The SAE and Metric bits are practically interchangeable.

> yet every toolset comes with Metric and SAE sets

I’ve mostly only seen that really with jumbo cheap quality “Father’s Day gift” type tool sets. If you are buying good quality tools, SAE and Metric are most often sold separately in my experience.

> It seems most companies here are stuck in the 80s and dedicate next to zero effort to their web ordering process.

I'm so glad we can order from mcmaster here in canada, even though shipping is two days and usually min 30 USD even for tiny orders. All local industrial suppliers are truly stuck in the 80s. They have a paper catalog, without prices (if you're lucky you can get a PDF too). If you want prices, you have to call a salesperson, or send an email with an item list and wait a day or two to get a quote back. Then you get your quote, and some items are in stock, some others in stock "nearby" (next day delivery), others are backorder (1-X weeks). Then you have a lengthy phone or email back and forth to try and figure out what's in stock as a replacement.

So yeah, McMaster whenever possible and I'll gladly (have my employer) pay more for it. Shout-out to Misumi, too, however. I do mostly prototyping and I use so much of their customizable items, like rotary shafts. Much cheaper and faster than doing a drawing, sending it out to 3-8 local shops to try to find one that is quiet enough jobwise to take on a tiny one-off project and waiting 4 weeks for it, at a high price.

10/10 agree for Canadians McMaster Carr is a godsend. Can order random stock material and have it tomorrow and have a certificate telling me exactly what stuff is with a nice cad model. Their search is the best though, can write some half assed description of what I want and it'll just deisplay what I want. Their mobile website is garbage though.

not for long ;)

>without prices

What in god’s name what!? How much business are they losing from that I wonder haha

We hade a competitor in Europe. It was called Zoro. Maybe not THAT clean but overall they also had a good website and great prices. But they folded some years ago.

In B2B we have Fabory: https://www.fabory.com

That's unfortunate you lost Zoro. They still operate in the US - I use them a lot.

I used accu.co.uk (in the U.K, not EU) for a project, and they were fantastic. I’m only a hobbyist though. Can someone explain what it is missing?

A friend of mine worked there right after college. I happened to buy some girl scout cookies through her, and joked with her that you can get everything from McMaster. When she brought me the cookies, she brought me a fake McMaster invoice for them too.

I've heard some mixed reviews about what it's like to work there, but I completely agree: as a customer, despite the (sometimes very high) prices, I was always incredibly happy with McMaster.

mcmcaster carr is also extremely popular in the hobby drone building market for buying bolts/nuts/fasteners/standoffs to attach circuit boards (ESCs, flight controllers, etc) to carbon fiber plate, and for attaching cnc cut carbon fiber plate piece together to build the whole frame of a small UAV.

people in the film/tv/production industry also use them to buy various fasteners and hardware for rigging lights, microphones, building complex camera systems onto gimbal platforms, etc.

We had piles of their yellow books laying around the house when I was a grad student. Definitely good toilet-book material.

Lucky. When I was in Engineering school, the Mechanical Engineering department had one catalog. We couldn't get any more - something about limited numbers printed (though, I'll confess I never tried to get my own). It was passed around among the students in Machine Design as if it were some sacred scroll.

Totally, it used to be a right of passage. You'd get your first job and (usually share) a copy of the machinerys handbook, and a yellow mcmaster book. I used to keep at least one at home long into the days where you don't need it anymore "just in case the internet goes down". It was those 2 books, the pemn 3 ring binder, and the ryerson catalog to know what mill sizes there were in what metals.

_Rite_ of passage. :-)

Really? I always found that the ink came off, then you need a bidet anyway...

Electrical Engineers traditionally use the Mouser catalog for that.

> you can send them a box of loose parts, no part numbers, no markings, and they'll go through it, figure out what's what, and refund you for it

That is insane. Mad props to them

I'm sure they have internal horror stories of the practice, but they do it.

When we sold an old company to a PE group, all the McMaster loose stuff in the warehouse went back to them stacked in boxes on a pallet for them to work through. I wouldn't be surprised to learn our CM did the same thing after the sale.

That kind of service must require tons of human intervention and employees who worked there for decades, no? I mean the catalog is humongous.

Knowing the customer’s order history reduces the search space in most cases.

NOICE

Didn’t think of that. Still damn impressive

Oh how I wish Mcmaster would open an EU branch... I don't even mind if they charge us more, but PLEASE for the love of all engineers in Europe, just open a branch here.

Maybe your customers or employer would like you to save 2, 3, 5, 10x the price…

My memories of McMaster from doing my hobbies is that it is outrageously expensive.

Time is money and buying from McMaster has always been faster and easier than any other site. I also have yet to get an incorrect item.

I have had an incorrect CAD model from them. (Which they fixed when I brought it to their notice). Once burned, twice shy.

This would be an immediate positive in my book. Most the bug reports I upstream to vendors go nowhere. Getting in contact with someone who can actually fix the problem, instead of just papering over it? Completely negates any downside from the original problem, in my book.

Really, I hear nothing back from a large majority of my bug reports. It must be around 3/4 are ignore or get a template response with no solution. Solving the problem is amazing. We all make mistakes, we don’t all fix them.

It depends on what you need. For basic metric nuts and bolts it seems to be the same price as a local hardware store but I don’t have to leave my office to buy the stuff.

They also have the weird stuff the local hardware stores don't, and usually it's higher quality.

Honestly, not really. They want the project done sooner, and McMaster is a means to that end. The supply chain team can find a better longer term vendor later.

Looks like an opportunity to make something as delightful and lower the prices.

I am thinking instead of low price free would be great. They can stick on some extra ads on stuff they would be selling.

Not at all. My rate is very high, so saving a day of my time saves them way more. The burn rate on some of these projects is hundreds of thousands, millions a day. Saving time when your on the critical path (as mechanical design typically is) is worth that much. Once the design is finished there is a whole army of manufacturing engineers and sourcing folks that can drive the cost down. That's not the niche that mcmaster fills.

If it's a commonly used item, it would be much more efficient to pay an entry level CAD guy to draw up a parametric screw part. Add in toolsolids of all the subtracts that the component will do (taps, CBore, clearance), and supplier call outs. It starts to become efficient.

But that's all already done for you in the mcmaster add in for solidworks.

Ah, that may be the key. (I do not use solidworks).

Have you done what you suggested before?

In my experience, the overhead of what you suggest is significant. Leading and instructing an employee or subcontractor, dealing with learning curves, etc. It sounds nice, but the logic in the GP comment is sound (i.e. that spending 2x or 3x the price for what you get can be worth it in most cases).

I use it everyday. It works very well. Just being able to easily switch screw sizes and having all of the taps/c'bores readjust is worth it.

Just tell the project manager that you're adding a day to the critical path for every screw needed, and he'll send you back to McMaster Carr.

Tried that, management still insisted I get all of it from Fastenal, great pricing and they have an online catalogue, but ffs it takes a week to get stuff in.

This is an example of bad management, I'd be happy to tell them

For like a $.5 part from McMaster? Are you on drugs?

McMaster is "expensive" but it isn't like they are charging a crazy amount of money. They are just expensive.

I still use them over randos tho bc I know I'm going to get what I ordered. I never did not, but if I did, I'd have the correct part maybe even same day.

The cost of the part doesn't matter. The cost of my time does.

For common components, I need a parametric part so that I can instantly change the length, size or type. If my M12 becomes an M16, I want all the taps and C'Bores to adjust without any further input from myself.

For more expensive parts, it's nice to have a homegrown parametric part to minimize potential missorders.

Drawing up a component is quick, sure. Measuring and specifying is not as quick and easy, and you won't necessarily have appropriate metrology equipment or trained personnel on site.

A fair price for an electrical resistor is roughly $0.02 - $0.08, depending on what you are ordering. Buying it from McMaster will probably cost you $0.12 - $0.50.

Not every component is this trivially inexpensive, but we are working in a price range where it's very much worth paying the high McMaster prices. Let them hire the entry level CAD guy and spread the cost across many more prototypes than your company will make.

When you refine the product for mass production, then it is worth shaving pennies.

You are, people ignore how much their time costs when they start "saving" money all the time.

Nahh, postage is $12.99; I can save that by driving 5 hours each way tomorrow to collect it - unlike you wasteful people who stupidly pay the postage and have it arrive the next morning /s

For production quantities, sure, nobody in their right mind would source from McMaster Carr (or Grainger, or any similar company,) but for their niche, they have a solid value proposition: they’ll get you small quantities of anything they carry incredibly quickly. For maintenance and repair (their primary market) or prototyping, that can be incredibly valuable.

Exactly!

I even buy home supplies (air filters, cleaning, etc) from them. They're wonderful.

High school shop/engineering teacher held a copy high: "Everything you will ever need, is in this book.".

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