Amazon was such a great, terrible invention. You can order a near-endless number of items that can be delivered to your home by tomorrow. But what if you’re an engineer? As it turns out, they have a sort of Amazon, too, and it’s fascinating. Thank reader JP15 for the “engineer’s Amazon” idea!
Jason wrote about the little cutie known as Personnel Carrier 6794N11. It’s a $7,214.99 personal mobility doohickey to scoot people around a factory or wherever. Now that’s silly, but what’s very serious is where the scooter came from, and it’s the McMaster-Carr Supply Company. MMC was founded in 1901 in Chicago, and its entire business is supporting other businesses with darn near anything an engineer or a factory might want to order. How effective is McMaster-Carr? Our readers have some incredible stories. Parsko:
The thing you are missing is the source. I’ve been shopping there over 15 years. Things are a premium because factories and engineers need it tomorrow, and they absolutely deliver. I’ve had a 1000lb surface plate in my lab next day. When you shop here, price is typically disregarded.
And, as said below, they are always in stock, or have an option that works. The search engine is amaze-balls, and like muscle memory for me.
Professor Chorls:
People who don’t regularly shop at McMaster really are missing out on how ethereally fast they are at delivering.
I’ve personally helmed a 130 or 140 line item order submission on a Thursday evening. We essentially ordered everything to build a device from scratch over the weekend for a surprise demonstration/show event for the company. The design wasn’t even done yet Friday at 1PM when the UPS guy woke us up in the conference room.
This was a delivery to Boston, from their New Jersey warehouse. That means it went out at 0700 sharp, got to Somerville distro around lunchtime, and they threw it at us the next town over afterwards.
Working with a lot of industrial suppliers is like pulling fingernails (like have you ever seen sprockets sorted by OUTER DIAMETER, NOT NUMBER OF TEETH?) but McM’s big swinging value-add sack is how systematic and predictable they are.
My only problem with them is now I live 10 minutes from the Atlanta distro center and I treat their Will-Call counter as a hardware store and this is costing me my financial stability.
Woah! That’s incredible. Oh no, please don’t send me down a rabbit hole!
Matt wrote about how Chrysler’s been through about a million revivals over the years and that Stellantis isn’t doing so hot right now. He used Office Space references throughout, and our readers delivered. A. Barth:
People can get automotive news anywhere, okay? They come to The Autopian for the atmosphere and the attitude. Okay? That’s what the flair’s about. It’s about fun.
Bronco2CombustionBoogaloo:
Jason Torchinsky, for example, has 37 pieces of flair… and a terrific smile.
Finally, Jason gave us a Cold Start featuring a VW New Beetle and a space shuttle. My Other Car is a Tetanus Shot:
NASA got a lot pickier with use of their brand after the release of the Oscar-winning film Armageddon, because the sheer cinematic genius and award-winning character study prowess of Michael Bay was just something NASA couldn’t compete with.
Zeppelopod:
NASA’s budget had been shrinking for years. It’s well known that they were able to hire Stanley Kubrick to film the moon landing AND do it on-location.
Have a great evening, everyone.
(Topshot: McMaster-Carr)
I finally had a chance to check my company’s ‘library’; the oldest McMaster-Carr catalog I can find is #107, celebrating 100 years. One of the project engineers might have an older copy in their office.
“Stumbled upon”? I thought McMaster was already well known?
I thought so too, but I guess I’ve used them ever since my engineering undergrad projects, so it could just be common knowledge in industrial/engineering circles.
It’s not well known by the layman. I started using them at my current job and they are an awesome resource, however I’ve found sometimes running to the nearest Ace Hardware can be as fruitful for fasteners and hardware.
McMaster Carr also provides free instantly downloadable files for everything they sell. Not just PDFs, but actual 3D CAD you can drop into a model or 3D print for a test fit.
It’s amazing. I have an entire McMC virtual hardware store on my computer for commonly used bits.
Almost everything they sell. I mean major props, the number of models available is insane, but not everything is available. Not sure what SW you use but you can just type the McMaster PN into Fusion 360 and poof it’s in your drawing.
Not an F360 user but that’s awesome and a natural evolution. TBH I’m no longer a CAD monkey so now it’s just for fun and I haven’t kept up with the tools. Haven’t pushed the limits of what they publish either – 99% of the time it’s just basic hardware for me.
I used to work down the street from a massive McMaster warehouse, and if you ordered something in the morning, it was there after lunch. It was fantastic.