Sourcing parts

[veedub565]

Having a mare sourcing parts for various projects.

Project 1
I need an inline fuse holder, cartridge style not blade type, one that isn't pre wired, will accept 12 or 14AWG wire, for use at 12v with a 6A fuse maybe 6.3x32mm size
You would have thought it would be a simple thing to source and buy. No, make no mistake there is lots and lots to choose from. None of them meet the simple requirement I'm looking for.
I did find a littelfuse one at Farnell... £15.95 surcharge because it's shipped specially from the US warehouse. And it has a weird locking arrangement, just use a bayonet style like everyone else.


Project 2
I need a pair of current limiting resistors (through hole) for a sealed lead acid charger project. Required resistance works out at 1.75ohm, but 1.8ohm is going to be the nearest standard value. So, 1.8ohm, 1/4W, Metal film.  simples yes?.. no.
RS - No
Farnell - No
CPC - no
Mouser yes... but £12 delivery... for 2 resistors
Digikey - Yes, but similar problem to Mouser and minimum order of about 5,000
Ebay yes... but they probably have leads thinner a human hair, and a temperature coeffiecient of who knows what. That's assuming they are within any sort of value tolerance to start with.

Project 3
Don't even get me started on the various (through hole) ceramic capacitors I'm trying to source which includes (but not limited to)
B471k 500v
Various value, 50/100v, N0G (underscore plus black tip)
222 500v
102 500v
104
391 500v
A "TA 820 J" marked SMD part that I still haven't 100% identified. Possibly a capacitor

 Maybe things are easier to source in the USA, it's proving frustratingly difficult in the UK though

[bob91343]

There is so much going on in the USA that parts are commodities.  One can get nearly anything due to the size and volume.

I may have some of the parts you need.  There is a class of resistor called flameproof that may well be what you can use for the 1.8 Ohm; I likely have something close.  I'm sure I have 2.2 and 1.5 for instance.  They may be 2 Watt.

In my trove of fuses and fuseholders I may well have what you seek but of course I am in California and shipping cost is daunting.  Most of my stuff is for the 1/4"x1-1/8" like 3AG.

The capacitors don't seem to be so unusual.  Disc ceramic for instance.

Don't you have any retail parts houses?  I have All Electronics near me, and a little place called LC Electronics is even closer.  Ebay has stuff too.

[veedub565]

I think things like this are much more readily available in the USA than the UK. I can't think of any high street stores now that stock or can source electronic components. It would be nice if we had places like all electronics, I bought a kit from them a little while ago. A friend of mine in Australia bought it from a store locally and posted it to me in a jiffy bag. Saved quite a bit on the shipping. Mostly it's online places for us RS, Farnell, CPC, Digikey etc and to be fair they are mostly pretty good. I'm just finding it a bit frustrating at the moment trying to find what I'm after.

I have small but growing stock of parts.
 

[veedub565]

The capacitors aren't especially unusual, which makes it all the more frustrating.

Out of all the thousands of parts RS stock, do you know how many C0G/NP0, 50/100v, through hole ceramic capacitors they have ? .......  3

I'm not kidding, see screenshot attached!

I know they can't stock everything in the history of the world, but it does make it frustrating when you are after a specific value part.

[jfiresto]

Some distributors are more conservative than others. If you can import from Germany, Reichelt is giving me 29 C0G/NPO "wired" parts. (The search may be a little slow loading.)

[srb1954]

The capacitors aren't especially unusual, which makes it all the more frustrating.

Out of all the thousands of parts RS stock, do you know how many C0G/NP0, 50/100v, through hole ceramic capacitors they have ? .......  3

I'm not kidding, see screenshot attached!

I know they can't stock everything in the history of the world, but it does make it frustrating when you are after a specific value part.

Try searching again without the selection restricted to 100V only. You will probably get much a wider range and you can always use higher voltage capacitors provided there is physical room for them.

However, those prices look really expensive! RS must be trying to phase out leaded parts altogether by making them so unaffordable that nobody buys them.

[edavid]

1. Did you try tme.eu?  They seem to have what you want, e.g. this fuseholder:

https://www.tme.com/us/en-us/details/fx0180/fuseholders-for-cable/bulgin/

2. If you have really been searching for N0G, try C0G or NP0 instead.

[veedub565]

Yes RS are expensive, although I've seen some sellers on Ebay asking £2.39 for one, yes one! 1,000pF ceramic capacitor. Must be having a laugh I think, or they have forgotten to mention that's for a pack of 10/100.

However the prize for most robbing bstrds has to go to Farnell. A couple of metal film resistors and a handful of ceramic caps came to £18.46 which is a lot, but I needed them so hey ho. When I came to pay for them though they then added on, ahem.. £15.95 shipping, £9.95 handling charge, and £8.87 VAT bringing the total to £53.24 for a few cheap caps and a couple of resistors. The £15.95 was because one of the items was located in their US warehouse. Removing that item knocked a bit off but still expensive.

Anyway, I have now found most of the caps I needed on Ebay, most of them are branded caps of the right values I need in a bags of 100 for £1.50 Although the leads look a bit oxidised on some of them. Either been stored incorrectly or decades old.

It's so hard identifying the correct specs for these caps too. For example A small brown ceramic disc capacitor marked up Suntan 102. It's 1,000pF right? So I found a Suntan 102 cap on ebay, looks exactly the same, datasheet says it's 50v. However the one I need to replace is paralleled up with a blue Suntan cap marked 222 500v. Why would you have a 50v and 500v paralleled up ? so is that little brown 102 cap actually meant to be a 500v one not a 50v one ? I thought a line under the value denoted 50/100v and if there was no line then it's 500v  Maybe I should start a new thread for this?

I looked at Reichelt, the link returned no search results, but I looked manually. I didn't see where it says if the caps are NP0 or not ?

RS didn't show any 50v ones, and the next voltage up from 100v was 1kv which is going to be too big to replace the little 50/100v ones. So that's why I restricted the search to 100v

[jfiresto]

... I looked at Reichelt, the link returned no search results, but I looked manually. I didn't see where it says if the caps are NP0 or not?...

The problem appears to be lazy web programming, specifically, not encoding the language into the page address. I tried the link in another browser and got a German-language page of nothing. After I

• changed "Sprache: Deutsch" to "Language: English" (next to the flag along the top)
• pasted the link into the address field and reopened it

I got the 51 parts again (most of them "wired").

[veedub565]

... I looked at Reichelt, the link returned no search results, but I looked manually. I didn't see where it says if the caps are NP0 or not?...

The problem appears to be lazy web programming, specifically, not encoding the language into the page address. I tried the link in another browser and got a German-language page of nothing. After I

• changed "Sprache: Deutsch" to "Language: English" (next to the flag along the top)
• pasted the link into the address field and reopened it

I got the 51 parts again (most of them "wired").

Thanks, I'll try it again

[fourtytwo42]

However the prize for most robbing bstrds has to go to Farnell. A couple of metal film resistors and a handful of ceramic caps came to £18.46 which is a lot, but I needed them so hey ho. When I came to pay for them though they then added on, ahem.. £15.95 shipping, £9.95 handling charge, and £8.87 VAT bringing the total to £53.24 for a few cheap caps and a couple of resistors. The £15.95 was because one of the items was located in their US warehouse. Removing that item knocked a bit off but still expensive.

Spot on, they got me like that too in the past, also they seem to stop order processing before lunch on Friday and don't start again till late Monday morning, add to that a 2 day delivery delay and boy can you wait a long time for parts usually when your in a rush!

RS has gone nuts on MOQ's like there trying to supply factories only but there prices are way to high for that so there in some weird place, I have almost given up searching for anything there as the MOQ is nearly always something stupid.

Trouble with bay is a lot of it is grey market, unknown parentage, so IMOP component supply in the UK sucks ATM.
Ohh I almost forgot there's the people who when you buy once are forever feeding on your credit card just to support Bezos's lifestyle