Many of us have a surplus of parts that we would like to share at a nominal price. I have in the past bought sockets, LED's, IC's and many other parts on ebay in lots of a 100 or more for little more than I would pay for two at Radio Shack. Now 99.5% of them is just taking up space. I think would be nice if the buyers and sellers at this forum could get together and share information.
I might need a part and the only way to get it is to mail order and pay $7.50 shipping for a part that cost less than $1.00. At the same time there might be a member here that would sell me two (including shipping) for a fraction of that price.

 

Yeah...I have a few hundred ring terminals which I bought that were the wrong size lol. By the time I got to using them and realized it, it was too late to return them.

 

QDI Advance 6E 900Mhz PIII 256Mb Ram 20Gb HD
17" CRT Display , wireless keyboard an' mouse ,loudspeakers
DVD Rom and CD/RW drives
Win98 o/s , system disk and original legal key available

 

The line is thin between a member trading off surplus stuff, for the benefit of other users and at no real profit, and one whose purpose is totally commerical.

That said most forums do have a special section for users to exchange parts or the like. Users post their surplus part and method of contact and the deal is done privately afterward.

Maybe our Master can consider introduce that on a temporary provision only which would then be subjected to full user reviews/feedback and shut it off immediately at the first sign of trouble.

This is only my opinion and there maybe other aspects/liabilities that I don't know about in creating that.

__________________
L.Chung

 

One obvious major problem is people not filling their location in! - there's already one idiot out of four posts who is like that!.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk

 

I've got loads of spare/obsolete electronics components. They did a stock check at work and threw out anything which hadn't been used in 2 years or more, so I took the component boxes out of the bin and took them home.

I'll have to do a database so that I can see exactly what I've got. No doubt there's been times when I've wanted something and actually had it in my big pile of stuff, but didn't know it was there.

Brian

 

I have a huge box containing 1000s of assorted resistors and capacitors with a few odd ICs I don't know what to do with.

__________________

I do not answer private messages asking for help because no one else can: benefit from advice I may give or correct me if I'm wrong.

Please ask on the open forum if you have a question and I'll be happy to help, if I know the answer.

 

Yeah it's the age-old dilema called "to chuck, or not to chuck". If you don't chuck, your workshop or workbench becomes cluttered with stuff you're rarely (if ever) going to use. But if you do chuck, you just know you're going to need something from your junk pile the very next day only to find you've binned it.

Brian

 

So what's your idea/comments towards a forum section for part exchange?

Let hear them.

__________________
L.Chung

 

My thoughts for now is to make a forum called "Parts Exchange", in reality there probably would be little exchange, more selling & buying.
1. To facilitate faster transaction, recommend the use of Pay Pal.
2. Let members list parts for sale with price and shipping cost. Maybe restrict the number of items to prevent commercial use. List should be kept up to date by editing the original post.
a. Maybe put a price limit on items and or transaction. (probably impossible to enforce)
b. Use the search function to find parts wanted and use the Private Message function for contacting the seller / buyer.
3. Let buyers post items wanted but not found, for a fixed time, maybe two - four weeks. Then remove post.
How to handle complaints? This is a problem and I don't have a clue.

 

Your post just made me think of a semi off-topic question I have had for a while now. Does anyone know of some sort of software that would assist you in managing all of your electronic components? I have searched for it extensively to no avail. I know I could use Access or the like, but it would be great to have something thats a bit more specific. Like for instance, I could perform a search of my inventory for a transistor with a rated voltage of at least 100V at 10A with a gain between 100 and 1000. I started writing some software a while back to do this, but I realized I would not have the time to finish it.

Well, now that I have my off topic question out of the way... I think the bartering system on the forum would be good in theory, but pretty impractical. It would take quite a bit of policing from the mods. Also, when I need something, I know exactly what I need, and I would rather browse though ebay or Mouser where I know there will be a much higher probability of finding that item. I do not think vBulletin, or an forum for that matter, is suited for a bartering; it would take a different Content Management System to work efficiently. An exception would be like over at 4hv.org. That is a quite specialized forum, where I could see it would work because everyone is looking for just about the same thing (Caps, SCR clamps, SCRs, et cetera).

 

The format you have suggested does not fit the 'exchange' purposes in the first place. User is not selling parts in general and making profit but rather than getting rid of surplus parts and also doing a favour for others in need of the part.

In my mind I would rather see members just post a list on what they have in surplus, with or without a suggested price for each. Interested user can then contact the original poster directly to arrange the exchange(if applicable) or deal. The modulators of the forum should not be adding on any additional workload because of this.

The exchange will be based on trust, on perception of the other party as revealed via their postings in general. As such any complaints would be private matters between the users instead of the forum being responsible.

__________________
L.Chung

 

I usually have the problem of only needing a part or 2 when working on a project. I compensate for this by working on 5-6 projects at a time. That way I will usually need 5-10 parts, which helps the shipping costs.

The 'wants' section kinda sounds like a good idea, there's an IC that I'm looking for thats used in the smps for my surround sound system. A mosquito flew inside and apparently it had an eye for the IGBTs. It landed between the gate and collector and toasted a good qty of components. Digikey has the surface mount available, but this is in a DIP package.

__________________
Jeff
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

I posted this idea some time back. Theres a couple problems. This forum, would need to be changed over into something that allows trader rep. We have this on another forum. For a Basic idea On what you need to sell, read this post.

http://forums.pcapex.com/trading_pos...t_must_be.html

Right where it says trader rep is the person trader rep. Which is good or bad. a Positive number is good and neg number is bad. Above that is the rep bar, its reputation (This is somewhat of an Advanced feature Im guessing) green is good, red bad. If you click on trader rep, you'll get a list of who the person has trader with, their experience and if it was positive or negative.

I dont know if you can see it if your registered or not.

We also have a mod or admin who monitor posts, they are examined before being posted according to the rules.

 

One forum I know ( http://www.network54.com/Forum/151930/) of have allowed selling of personal photographic items (from cameras to filters) and as far as I can tell there have been no abuse that I have observed over the last several years.
The items are listed with a price and the rest is taken care of by email. Seller post a "Sold" when he feels the transaction is nailed down.
Simple and elegant, but it only works as long as everyone plays nice.