Hi, I hope I'm in the right thread. Do you guys know where I can (reliably) buy discontinued electronic components? I sometimes need obscure parts to keep our machines running. The obvious is EBAY, but I'm looking for replacement parts for my company, so EBAY would be really the last straw (mainly as I cannot use our official invoice/supplier system for ebay) Funny enough, upto now, the only places I've found it is Aliexpress.com, which is even worse than EBAY. Anyway this is the part in this specific case "ANALOGIC ADC5020" That's a sampling 18-bit A/D-Converter for you puzzeled ones out there. The worst part is, this component (which isn't manufactured anymore) is still built into brand new machines. Bweh Xir
Depends on how old the component is, if its been out of production for a REALLY long time, pretty much all you got is ebay. If its intermediate usually one of the big electronics warehouses will stock some still. Since its for your business just try calling up one of the manufacturers that still use it and see if you could buy a hundred or a thousand off of them. They would probably be happy to get rid of their stock of them and get better supported parts. If that fails you might be able to find a drop in replacement with enough searching. Considering there are about a zillion ADC's out there you have a pretty good chance. ADC's are typically easier to switch out than other IC's. I don't really know of any place that specifically specializes in obsolete ICs, other than specialty things like vacuum tubes and such.
I want your job. Have you actually used aliexpress or do you just not like the look of it? I have used it quite a few times I don't think it's that bad.
Tracing parts and finding replacements is only a very small part of the job. Pretty much the most fun part though. @Kronos It's a little box that turns an analogue signal into a digital signal. It's the core part of a huge PCB that gives out the signal on a measuring machine. @Xrain The manufacturer would like to sell me the huge PCB with the ADC5020 on it, not the (relatively cheap) part itself. I suspect only the ADC5020 is broken...I may be wrong. About buying from Ebay / Aliexpress Sending company money into the interwebs and hoping something will return after a couple of weeks is something else than doing this privately. Paying upfront is not something that companies usually do...
You should be able to probe it to check pretty easily, see if its getting the expected voltages at the input, and if you pull it off you can always breadboard it and test the ADC to see if its outputting the right values as well.
If none of the usual suppliers (farnell/digikey/mouser/elfa/etc) have it, then usually the only place to get it is form China (doesn't really matter if its ebay/aliexpress or any other intermediary site) . And dealing with Chinese is always 'fun'. You usually get what you pay for - if the price is right (not too low and not too high, don't bother with 'genuine', it never is), the component/part will behave as advertised. The real problem is that Chinese tend to put lower price in invoice/customs declaration, which is fine-ish if you are buying as individual, but a big no-no if buyer is a company.
well, we get the same output no matter what input, hence my theory that it's busted Ah! I'll check these. My problem with ebay and/or China is more that I have no money, but a financial department that handles invoices. Means I need a middle man to order the stuff privately, and then send us an invoice. Done it before, it works, but it's non-standart. And the bigger the company gets, the more difficult non-standart gets.
Many companies have credit cards for things like this, I'm assuming yours does not? Failing that, then as you suggested, if you or your company are on good terms with a smaller supplier, they will often be happy to order things like this on your behalf and invoice your company in the normal way. I've done it many times in the past for non-critical items where a manufacturer/supplier is not on the approved vendors list.
I was a member here many years ago, but it looks as though that account has gone so I'm back to newbie status. I purchase components for an OEM, we have kit going back 40 years that we still make so sourcing parts can often be difficult. There's loads of companies out there that specialise in sourcing obsolete components, they normal buy through franchised distribution, if these parts are still in circulation that might be an option, if not they also source through other companies that may have stock. Stay away from the ones that source from China and the like as chances are you'll get empty chips back. I can recommend a few companies I've been dealing with recently. Whistler - www.wtxplc.com there's a guy there named Shaun who's excellent. They have a tiered system with each supplier having a rating and there work from best to worst. A-TEC - http://www.a-tecuk.com/ we used this company for going on 10 years but they got a bit complacent with pricing, all there stock was 100%. Astute - http://www.astute.co.uk/ we don't use this company as much but all there stock again was 100% We tend to swap between "favourites" as it tends to keep them on the ball with pricing. One thing I've found, try not to email more than 2-3 companies at one time as this will immediately bump the price up, imagine being the guy with the stock and getting 20+ requests within hours for stock. I've seen component value triple by doing this. Small quantities shouldn't be a problem but be prepared to pay more.
