Bimba wait time

[snoman]

first of all i am very appreciative of this company being willing to do so much donating to FIRST Robotics. That being said the build and ship time on our free cylinders will almost make them unusable for this season. ( we ordered the first day website was working. As of today 7-10 days yet tell they get here
maybe its the good, fast, cheep ...pick 2 philosophy

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by snoman

first of all i am very appreciative of this company being willing to do so much donating to FIRST Robotics. That being said the build and ship time on our free cylinders will almost make them unusable for this season. ( we ordered the first day website was working. As of today 7-10 days yet tell they get here
maybe its the good, fast, cheep ...pick 2 philosophy

Unfortunately, this is true. Bimba's donation is awesome, but it's only real use is to build up an inventory of pistons on the off-chance that they will be used in future years.

[BJT]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

Unfortunately, this is true. Bimba's donation is awesome, but it's only real use is to build up an inventory of pistons on the off-chance that they will be used in future years.

Exactly what we do. We get from bimba stuff we think might be useful in the future. What we need now comes from mcmastercarr.

[Knufire]

Cylinders we purchase from Bimba do come rather quickly.

[Monochron]

Do pistons ordered without the voucher ship in a more reasonable time? Or is it Bimba in general that is very slow?

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Do pistons ordered without the voucher ship in a more reasonable time? Or is it Bimba in general that is very slow?

If I recall correctly, the cylinders we ordered outside of the voucher in 2013/2014 came in about 2 weeks. About half of them had non-standard mounting options, so there's a chance they were assembled after we ordered them from pre-fabbed individual parts - thus the lead time. This seems reasonable to me.

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Do pistons ordered without the voucher ship in a more reasonable time? Or is it Bimba in general that is very slow?

Lead time on standard size pistons is pretty quick. It's really just the voucher that's slow IMO. We ordered some pancake cylinders last Tuesday and had them by Friday.

[Chris_Elston]

Automation Direct...

Ships SAME DAY. For us, 2 days UPS GROUND from GA.

http://www.automationdirect.com/adc/...ers_(A-Series)

Good prices to me and worth it to my team.

Or, PHD has some OCG cylinders, but they are not easy to get through a website, you have to locate a distributor in your area.
https://www.phdinc.com/product/?prod...ers&series=ocg

Find a PHD Distributor:
https://www.phdinc.com/support/mydistributors/

[RonnieS]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Do pistons ordered without the voucher ship in a more reasonable time? Or is it Bimba in general that is very slow?

This might be varied. When we ordered Bimbas before, we had to go through our local distributor. They got them to us in a week.
-Ronnie

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Automation Direct...

Ships SAME DAY. For us, 2 days UPS GROUND from GA.

http://www.automationdirect.com/adc/...ers_(A-Series)

Hhm, I'm wondering if it is the "made to order" cylinders from Bimba that take a long time to ship. AD there looks to have a bunch of stock cylinders that, if they don't have to produce them after you make the order, could ship out a lot faster. Maybe Bimba's benefit is that you can get nearly any size from them, but you have to wait?

[Tom Line]

Last year, we ordered cylinders. The 'free' ones shipped from Mexico and took something like 3 weeks. The purchased ones shipped from Chicago and we had them in just a couple days. The cylinders were the same.

[Gary Dillard]

I just called and heard back from Bimba, we ordered 1/15 and they hope to ship from Mexico tomorrow (1/30), no delivery information. We need spares anyway so I guess I'll go ahead and order a couple from AD so we can finish assembly.

[Bennett548]

The cylinders (3/4" bore, 12" stroke, double acting, rear pivot) we ordered from McmasterCarr ended up being Bimbas anyways. They probably aren't all Bimba cylinders, but some are.

[snoman]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Last year, we ordered cylinders. The 'free' ones shipped from Mexico and took something like 3 weeks. The purchased ones shipped from Chicago and we had them in just a couple days. The cylinders were the same.

same thing for us. supposed to be here tomorrow i am tracking them with UPS on my phone

[Monochron]

For what it's worth, I ordered Automation Direct cylinders yesterday and they will be arriving tomorrow. The offer free 2-day shipping on any orders over $49 and have a fairly reasonable selection: http://www.automationdirect.com/adc/...ders_(A-Series) 7/16" bore up to 2" bore. Bimba or McMaster would probably have more selection, but these met our needs this year and were much more inexpensive (around $60 for a 2" bore 4" stroke).