McMaster-Carr has the best shopping website I've ever seen. The UI is beautifully intuitive; even if I don't know exactly what I need, odds are I can easily find something that will work and they can have it at my doorstep in under 24 hours, no matter how obscure. Even if I don't plan on buying anything, it can be helpful to click through the site just to see what is available. Because most categories of parts have surprisingly well written descriptions and breakdowns, the sire can actually be a good engineering resource.
I've bought from them many times before and have yet to be disappointed with what I got. It is definitely expensive compared to other suppliers or Amazon, etc. But you pay for the convenience.
I hear they aren't very good outside the US though, which is a shame.
This has actually created a huge bias in my company. People try to solve problems with parts from McMaster because it’s so easy to search, but we often overlook other company’s (e.g. Cole-Palmer) products (which may be much better suited for our applications) because it’s a pain to find them on their websites.
> I hear they aren't very good outside the US though, which is a shame.
I hope that this comment won't be interpreted harshly, but their familiarity with mainly American measurements really handicaps them elsewhere. It's not really their fault, but counterintuitively from where I am it's still miles better than other (domestic or international) suppliers for smaller quantities.
I was more referring to issues with shipping and ordering outside of the US. But you are entirely right about them focusing on American measurements, their selection of metric parts is much weaker and more expensive than their customary (main?) Sizes of parts. I do wonder if they are or will be working on improving that any time soon.
I assume they meant that they default to making things that come in imperial-unit sizes (e.g., quarter-inch nuts instead of 6mm ones or whatever). It's not really practical to mix and match.
McM is just a warehousing and distribution company; they don't make any of the things they sell. They define products by specs rather than manufacturer (is few brand names are used in the catalog/site), which makes it much easier to stock parts of every nearly every flavor (imperial, metric, dozens of odd pipe threading standards, thousands of ASME/ANSI/DIN/other-standards-body-standards).
I'd love it if they added a price filter option! If I want a clear plastic tube I don't always know whether I'll get a cheaper price with acrylic, UV-resistant acrylic, static dissipative acrylic, ultra-strength polycarbonate, high-temperature polycarbonate, etc... It can take a lot of clicking to find the cheapest option!
Unfortunately I don't see them creating a price filter as they are mainly geared at businesses vs. hobbyists or consumers, where "get it here fast" is more important than saving a few dollars. That being said, I find adding all of the prospective parts to the cart works well for me when I want to compare prices
Often, the only reason you wouldn't choose, say, stainless steel over regular steel, or UV-resistant polycarbonate over ordinary polycarbonate, is because of the expectation that one is cheaper. So price can't be so unimportant. And one version always is cheaper, sometimes by a factor of five or ten times. But sometimes there are surprises and the stainless version is cheaper for other reasons. Maybe the non-stainless bars of that particular size are only available with super tight tolerances, for example.
So why force the customer to know and guess which material grade they want as a proxy for price, when you can directly let them find the selection that meets their needs at the lowest price?
As a business user, I’d like the price filter too. For instance, I might be okay with any material for a valve in a prototyping application as long as it’s the right size, I just need to find the cheapest one (with one day shipping of course!)
I’ve yet to work in a business that doesn’t care about the price of something. This is particularly true when we are evaluating parts that might be used in production at scale.
For what it's worth, I work in industrial controls. More or less all of the machines we design are one-offs so engineering and labor time dominates the cost of projects vs. materials.
Additionally, unplanned downtime is extremely expensive. If a machine breaks down and a replacement part isn't on the shelf, getting that part fast is much more important than saving a few dollars. Same goes for if we end up with a bunch of guys waiting around for a part to get installed.
McMaster-Carr's website is great for finding items, but it's really irritating if you're just ordering one or two things and want to know what it'll actually cost. Unless it's changed in the last few years, they won't let you know the grand total until AFTER you place your order. Maybe it helps them simplify order fulfillment, but it's really annoying.
I've bought from them many times before and have yet to be disappointed with what I got. It is definitely expensive compared to other suppliers or Amazon, etc. But you pay for the convenience.
I hear they aren't very good outside the US though, which is a shame.