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.
*Originally posted by Anton Abaya *
**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 **
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.
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…
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
*Originally posted by Ed Sparks *
**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 …
**
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.
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!
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,
