The trick of any DIY electronics project is to get parts reasonably cheaply and reasonably fast.
In the 1980s getting parts was tricky unless you lived in a city that had a number of electronics suppliers. My town had one supplier and its store was about 2000sqft. They were able to keep a lot in the back storage and would bring it out when you asked, but they did not have everything.
In the 1990s, phone/catalog suppliers started online stores. Usually quirky parts with some typical electronics parts.
In the 2000s, more online suppliers and eBay. Ebay had a lot of "stuff", but the cheapest came from China via the slow boat.
Lately, I've been using Arrow for my electronic part supply after getting fed up with long delivery times from China and the lost shipments. I've used Digikey in the past to order parts, but I've lately been going to Arrow to search for parts, fill a shopping cart and making an order. I'm using Arrow because:
- Seem to have what I need.
- Free shipping recently
- Fast shipping
- Comparable prices with Digikey
I did a comparison between Arrow, Avnet and Digikey. With shipping for Avenet and Digikey, a small order would be significantly more and individually, the parts I needed were a little more expensive. This is not a complete analysis of all the suppliers (not intended to be) and if you were ordering 3000 parts, you would get a significant discount
*Digikey part was a different manufacturer
So far, I've been very pleased with the orders from Arrow and plan to continue to use them (hope free shipping sticks around).
9/10/2019: Seems to be Free Shipping on $50+ now.
