Hacker News Reader

Comment by problems | Hacker News Reader

People buying 7 cent chips off Aliexpress and similar know full well that it ain't coming from TI and usually isn't labelled as such - it might be called an NE555 but make no mention of manufacturer and not have one labeled on the chip itself. Obviously finding a datasheet from a different manufacturer won't be applicable...

If you're buying those you're most likely using it for an application that isn't pushing its limits - they're great for experimenting with as a hobbyist or cranking your design to the lowest price possible if you're not on those limits.

View on HN

Mouser is selling TI NE555DR for $0.07 in quantity, so I am sure that TI's actual sale price is lower.

So, I think someone paying $0.07 on aliexpress is paying "full price" for something less, even if they rationalize they are getting a discount because they are not buying large lots (Buy only 100 at mouser and the cost goes up to $0.15, but for instance Arrow has a lower price than that for this quantity)

AliExpress has another benefit though; zero to very low shipping costs.

In the EU buying electrical components at a hobbyist scale often means having to save up your purchases (e.g., €0,24 for the NE555 at Conrad) until you hit the minimum free shipping limit (in this case €20) or pay the full shipping (€4,95 in this example) for one little component.

AliExpress just has the better user experience if you are learning and experimenting (just buy a couple of spares and be prepared to switch to genuine stuff when needed).

Relevant:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651884

Your domestic mail subsidizes part of it.

I think I remember but don't have links ATM that the international part of the travel is also subsidized by the Chinese gov. Dumping, basically.

I don't understand why these places can't just use regular mail.

I wanted some discrete through-hole MOSFETs for bidirectional level shifting as described in this application note [1].

The ZVNL110A satisfies all of the requirements [2]. In small quantity they were $0.604 each at the time from Mouser, and I wanted 10, so $6.04 for the MOSFETs. And then another $7.99 for freaking shipping. (I ended up ordering 30, figuring maybe I'll eventually need that many, and then I'm "only" paying 50% for shipping instead of >100%).

These things are very small, and only weigh half a gram each. Just take an ordinary letter envelope, drop them in, put a first class postage stamp on it ($0.49), and mail it. A $0.49 first class stamp allows up to 99 grams, so orders up to a couple hundred of these could be shipped that way.

For those curious, the size constraints on a first class letter in the US are:

  3.5" <= height <= 6.125"
  5" <= width <= 11.5"
  0.007" <= thickness <= 0.25"

0.25" is 6.35mm. A large number of through-hole components would usually fit, such as transistors, diodes, resistors, and disc capacitors. Most surface mount components would fit.

[1] https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/an97055.pdf

[2] http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/115/ZVNL110A-95598.pdf

I wonder what the breakdown on the actual shipping vs handling labor costs are for a big distributor like Mouser or DigiKey.

Compare with labor costs for either factories or small owner operated export businesses run out of Shenzhen and you can see where there might be a pretty big difference in the handling price.

Mouser and DigiKey could offer a reduced SLA for small postal orders, meaning they wouldn't send someone out specifically to pick that order, but would do it opportunistically.

Labour costs are probably the primary barrier for this, but I can't help but wonder if a big distributor couldn't make it work; after all, the labour costs are already factored into the component unit price, not the shipping costs. For a large, traditional order you get a shipping list, determine the box size needed, gather the components, pack the box, slap a label on, and place it in the outgoing mail trolley.

For these small shipments, you would get a shipping list, see that the order system determined that it would fit in an envelope, grab an envelope, gather the components (perhaps for ten envelope-orders at a time), place in envelope, slap a label on, and place it in the outbox for envelopes.

It doesn't seem that much more labour intensive or more expensive in terms of packaging, and the first distributor in a geographical area to do so might gain a bunch of customers. Even if the base price of components was increased by 10% or 20% for envelope orders a lot of us would still use that service.

Letter envelopes go through roller machines that bend them quite a bit. If you sent rigid objects through it will be delivered in pieces. There was an EEVBlog video about a viewer who sent a PCB or solar cell (i forgot) in a letter... Dave received dust.

These fakes chips were labeled as Ti on the plastic package... They tried to make it look like real deal...

Interesting, after doing some searching all listings I've looked at they either lack a logo or have a TI-ish logo but they don't mention it being a TI brand or genuine TI part in any way in the description - which is always a dead giveaway as if they do so they can be subject to punishment. Alibaba is actually pretty harsh on people selling known counterfeit goods and will ban sellers if they catch onto it - so I assume they don't mention it because their buyers don't care much and they don't want to get in shit for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com