I was going to say there seems to be some misconception about cheap. Many US companies sell "top quality" goods with a substantial mark up, claiming them to be american. Then you take them apart to see China written all over them.... I see it in the mfg world every day. I am willing to pay for quality parts but not pad the pockets of US companies just trying to screw and lie to the public and get rich doing it.

Example. Go to Harbor Freight and buy their 6" digital caliper for 11 bucks. Accurate to .001 easily and we are a CNC mfg and have tested them and they are decent. That same "exact" caliper is sold by Starrett for 80-120 bucks!! I could care less who's name is on it, quality is what we are looking for.. I would not mind paying the 100 bucks for a quality product made by starrett but when they buy China crap and mark it as their own, I have issues with that.

 

I have seen many cheap Chinese products that do not work because they are missing very important parts! They obviously were not tested in the factory and there was no quality control.

The stores that sell them replace them and just toss the bad ones into the garbage can and say, "here's another one".

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Uncle $crooge

 

Yes you can get a LOT of nasty junk products from China.

But as far as buying surplus electronic components goes, most are brand-name components in orginal antistatic packaging, with dates and QA stickers, etc etc. The surplus houses buy end of production runs from big companies. So big company makes 150,000 widgets with top quality parts then after production is done they sell the remainder 3900 parts to a surplus house. Where you can then buy a perfect hewlett packard $5 display for 50 cents.

Most surplus houses are quite honest about whether any part they stock is a new QA tested part or is a factory "second".

 

There is a surplus electronics parts store near me. They sell name-brand ICs for half the normal price. I bought some wall-wart switching regulated power supplies (5V at 2A) made for a name-brand modem for less than $1.80 each.

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Uncle $crooge

 

Are there any other online US retailers we shold check with for these? We have looked at Newark, Mouser, Allied, Digikey. Not sure if there are others to consider..

 

I like their prices