Our Small Parts Experience, to all TEAMS
 

To all the teams out there:

I just want you all to know how hassling it was to deal with Small Parts this year.

Firstly, it's only the 2nd week, and they're out of stock on all the sprockets we were asking for. We had to change design twice because they would run out after we would order it. Worse, they would ship us 8 of the 20 sprockets we asked for. What do we do with 8 sprockets if the rest are not coming in a week? Most of their sprockets are already out of stock.

The second time I ordered, I asked for a larger toothed sprocket. I asked how many they had, and they said 70+. I then ordered 20, and got my 8. It was blamed on other other orders that came before mine. Awesome, tell that to my work calendar and timeline. Delays, delays, delays...

Well, after I spoke to several representatives, they did manage to find me replacements and did give me a discount on overnight shipping. I expected it to be free considering they promised me twice that I would receive the full number of sprockets.

SPI was definitely unprepared this year for 900 teams or so. Both with their inventory and perhaps their efficiency and accuracy as well. They had blamed it on FIRST and said that they are NOT the official sponsor anymore or something like that. In any case, they should have expected a surge of orders. Perhaps FIRST could have given them a heads up as well?

So for all you teams who are still in design phase, I highly suggest you take into consideration their dwindling inventories. Go call them and ask how many they have left -- or when they expect the next shipment to arrive.

And by all means, get your sprockets somewhere else. Or ask them how many more they have left.

-anton abaya
Rambots, #419

Re: Our Small Parts Experience, to all TEAMS
 

Thanks for the heads-up....we just placed an order this morning, and i am not sure how that will come out.

I am very interested in what other teams experience because being a rookie team, I expect we will be lightly behind the curve as far as schedule, and hang-ups like this could be critical.

Thanks for sensitizing people to a potential problem.

-Quentin :(

We are also on the wait for sprockets from SPI". We were told 2 weeks :eek: back order for the larger tooth sprockets.... Hmmm, I wonder who got them all....

:rolleyes:

a list of online suppliers
 

Well, maybe we can now take this opportunity to put together a list of online stores team's have been using to buy gears and sprockets, or whatever is on the additional hardware list.

I know most people know about this place already, as especially the engineers, but I will post this anyway.

http://www.mcmaster.com/

They almost have everything you will ever need for hardwares. And you can tell them to ship them to you overnight. And they seems to never run out of stocks.

Since FIRST allow us to buy any amount of sprockets/gears at any place, we should really take advantage of that, especially a lot of teams are just take the easy way out and get from small parts.

Another place to get things is MSC industrial Supply Co.

www.mscdirect.com


As long as we order before 4pm we get it by 9am the next day. without the high price.


We have almost all of our stock so go ahead and buy buy buy

Another great source is Berg
http://www.wmberg.com

I posted this to another thread, but it may be useful here as well. We have put together an index of useful metal working-related web sites at

http://ranier.hq.nasa.gov/Metal/MetalSites.html

There are links to lots of suppliers and materials sources. Another resources for electronic components and other robot-related items is

http://ranier.hq.nasa.gov/teleroboti...netrobots.html


-dave

Yes, we are in MIAMI and we PICK UP our stuff. We went in to get our stuff, and they said that they were short on sprocks, so we say fine, we ll try tommorrow. I call next day, the lady tells me she will hold it for us for 20 minites (its 20 mins away) and when we get there, they are already gone. Make the story short, took us 3 days for us to get the gears.
Other than that, we've had no big probs with Small Parts- esp since we are right here in Miami and dont have to wait for it to be shipped :)

Another suggestion...
 

McMaster charges an arm and a leg.

Here's my advice. Go to http://yp.yahoo.com. It's online yellow pages for your area. Go type in "gears" and look for local listings of gear manufacturers. They might give you a big discount and might have a less bombarded inventory.

As we all know, Small Parts just purchases from other sources and sells it to us. Just go straight to the manufacturer for sprockets, gears, etc. It'll save you time, money, and stress.

Good luck teams!

-anton

ps. SPI was pretty good in the past years. But they did not think ahead.

Our team has had a lot of luck with Stock Drive Products / Sterling Instruments at http://www.sdp-si.com/. They have good stock and were very helpful and patient on the phone. They even shipped fedex for next day arrival.

Was there a small parts catalog in the kit of parts? No one here remebers ever seeing it?

no, they were not included. According to SPI, they told me they are not official sponsors of first this year.

-anton

No Catalogs ....
 

I requested catalogs for our team back in November and last week. I got a response a couple days ago that Small Parts is out of catalogs.


I expect that the economy is hurting Small Parts and it's ability to provide it's past level of service. I guess everyone has to cut back to survive.

The absence of the grant for Small Parts hurt my hardware budget this year so I don't get to experiment as much as I would like.

Maybe next year ......

:p

Another Hint
 

http://www.globalspec.com

You can search across the industry for the part you want. It is particularly useful for gears and sprockets. They can also help you find local suppliers. But since it is just a place for data exchange, your mileage may vary when it comes to actual results.

Have Fun!

No SPI, Anyone Scared about Regionals?
 

I dont know about you guys, but my team seems to go through a lot of SPI stock, especcially during the wear and tear of a regional. With no on site SPI people, what are we goingt o do. I am very worried.

Even though there aren't going to be any SPI employees at the competition sites, there will still be a "small parts booth" at the competition sites with spare parts. At least this is what I understood when I spoke with FIRST.

Re: No Catalogs ....
 

I requested a catalog in December some time, and this explains why I have not received it!

This is another thing that affects rookie teams alot. We are lucky to have someone who has a small parts catalog from two years ago...or we would be potentially at quite a dissadvantage.

Disadvantage because while the Allowed List of materials is nice, the ability to dip into ANYTHING in the small parts inventory is lost of you don't know what they have in their catalog.

Their web page is ok, with PDF pages from their catalog....but there is nothing like flipping page by page scanning a catalog with an open mind looking for ideas to solve a problem.

-Quentin

Be careful when ordering...
 

According to the rules, you can only order parts that you could get on SmallParts.com or anything on the additional hardware list. Also, they have to be EXACTLY the same :( or else they won't be allowed!

Sprockets!!!
 

Ok, so I was trying to figure out what to do about my tems sprocket problems, i loked at two leftovers from SPI from last year. Stamped on them was the word <b><i>Martin</B></I>. So after a little research on the internet i found http://www.martinsprocket.com/. These are the people who make sprockets for SPI! there for order it from them, skip the SPI problems and still get by within the rules. Sounds good to me. Oh and lok on your old sprockets to see if i was right about the Martin stamp on it!

Martin is the supplier for Small parts. They are out of sprockets already. We pick up the last of them. they should have more in about two weeks. 24t,36t,48t,


there are plenty of other places it get them.

Now for Teams 535 SPI horror story.

We ordered everything to build our robot Tuesday. They said it would go out Next Day FedEx. The parts were ordered early morning. We called today and they told us the parts were still in the warehouse. Now we have to wait another day!!! :mad: Also, half of our gear order is on backorder. Won't be in till 1/30.
Now is this anyway to run a railroad? Did SPI think that 660 teams would not need a few parts for their robots? Were they caught off-guard? I don't think so. Why couldn't SPI stock up on the most asked for parts? It boggles the mind :confused:

*throws $.02 into kittty*

Wayne Doenges

Go with the flow....
 

I know this will sound critical, but think about the state of the economy, and consider that Small Parts might be trying to keep inventories down like everyone else.

I think the timing of the economic downturn is very unfortunate for everyone....and particularly people who have to get a job done in 6 weeks.

Perhaps some of the blame might be laid on FIRST itself for requiring such strict rules regarding purchases from Small Parts....not that Small Parts probably doesn't want the business, but with crunch time schedules for 660 teams, quick delivery is important. (remember that running a FIRST competition during a tight economy has never benn done....I'm sure there are "special" circumstances/issues that crop up that have never been seen)



Either way, this is life....and we need to go with the flow and get it all done somehow.

-Quentin

As i was sitting in class i thought of something. How does SPI justify saying that they were caught off guard by the orders, THIS COMPETITION HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR 12 YEARS!. What did they think was going to change this year? The sagging economy is ABSOLUTLEY NO! reason to keep a low stock on hand. If they were prepared then there would still be the demand for them. Also how can they justify saying they didnt know, uhh they are giving each team 25% off everyorder. If this was my company I think i would know to order more stock. If FIRST chose SPI as there official supplier then they should say uh we had 00 teams that ordered a total of 1500 sprockets and we have 700 teams this year so we should order 2100 this year. I am required to do my homework to pass the class so why shouldnt SPI be required to do there homework?
Can you smell the sarcasm in this post?

Remember, a big part of what FIRST is all about is giving students (and sometimes engineers!) a taste of '"real world engineering." It is an opportunity to see how practicing engineers solve problems, overcome hurdles, and attempt to triumph over adversities small and large.

Hmmm. Your suppliers aren't delivering on time? Parts on back order for longer than you expected?

Welcome to the real world.

So what to do now? You can sit here and whine about the poor performance of SPI, or you can try to solve your problem. I would like to make the following suggestion - why don't we change the tone of this thread to: "I can't get part xxx from SPI in time, can anyone help me find an alternate supplier FAST?"

I'll offer up the first suggestion. We are on two-week backorder for 1/4" pitch chain from SPI. Ordered a week ago, when we checked at the end of this week we were told it would be another two weeks. We found a company called Motion Industries that carried the identical part. Turns out they have about 500 outlets around the country (check their locator at http://www.motionindustries.com/ ). A quick 30-minute car trip to their nearest location, and problem solved. While there, a quick wander through their warehouse revealed that they carried a lot of other gears, chain, sprockets, bearings, etc. that SPI carries (I think that I even saw a whole pile of the Martin sprockets). I am probably going back this weekend with SPI catalog in hand to verify part similarities, and see if I can take care of all our back-order issues all at once.

-dave

in the real world, is the deadline normally 6 weeks? You're right, economics will tell us that our resources are scarce. Perhaps the real world shouldnt be this harsh on rookie teams though. Nice a gentle, we might scare them away!

Dave im not whining. I am just saying this is NO way for an official sponsor to act towards customers.
For example:
My moms company is the official supplier of cash register supplies to the Hilton Corporation. If she says i have a two week back order on most of the product that you are ordering, then Hilton will say goodby. They will take there business elsewere and her company will lose money.
The point is that the official supplier of FIRST should act accordingly. This will set many teams back.

In the real world Small Parts would be dropped as a supplier faster then they could say were out of most of the parts you ordered.

Let me try again.
 

Are we all disappointed that SPI has not been able to keep up with the demands of this year’s competition (for whatever reason the may be)? Yes. Are we all ticked off when this affects our ability to construct our robots? Yes. Are we the only ones that this ever happens to? Obviously, not. Should we get so paralyzed with indignation that we forget to deal with the fundamental problem of getting the robot built? Duh, let me think about that for a while… :)

My point is very simple: we can waste a lot of time complaining about how we are being treated by suppliers, or we can get around the problem. FIRST has given us a perfect way to do just that - they clearly said that it we can't get a part in a timely fashion from SPI, we are free to go elsewhere to get an indentical part. Just like the real world, if the supplier can't deliver on time, we are able to take our business (and money) elsewhere.

Make no mistake: it is completely appropriate to provide feedback to FIRST about how SPI, or any other supplier, treated teams - they need to know. But I would suggest that the most appropriate time and place to do that is the team forums later this summer, in a concise and professional manner. But right now, it is time to concentrate on getting robots built. And if in the process of solving our supplier problems we are able to help other teams running up against the same shortages, I think it would be great.

Me, I am very interested in finding out where I can get 1/2" flanged ball bearings by tomorrow afternoon...

-dave

-------------

Somewhere, a villiage is missing their idiot. You see, I recently moved...

Dave -

Which bearings do you need, exactly?

If they came in the kit, and you are in need of more than what was supplied, we can probably help you.

You can contact me by e-mail : Leo.Meire@Infineon.com

I hope I can help.

Leo -

Thank you very, very much for the offer - it is most generous! But I think we may have that one solved. The local Motion Industries outlet didn't have exactly what we needed in stock. But he checked and found out that the store in Atlanta has what we need, and is having them shipped over-night up here. We pick them up on Thursday morning (now I just hope that no teams in Atlanta need the same bearings we want!:D ). And after all that, he did not charge extra for shipping - instead he gave us a discount when we told him about the project!

-dave


------------------------------------------


I went on vacation to "find myself" - and got lost!

I ordered some stuff -- sprockets, chain, bearings, etc. -- from Motion Industries, Inc. (https://www.motionmro.com/motion/jsp/index.jsp ) and they were very helpful and prompt. I looked them up in the phone book -- they have offices in several cities -- but they also have a web site (address above). Good luck in getting your parts. We had problems with Small Parts also.