Digi Key huge box of air…

Dan0h

Dan0h

Well-known member
I placed my very first order with Digikey recently. (This Low Tide better be worth it four different vendors and $hipping for these parts…) I know Mouser will sometimes use a bit bigger boxes than they should for small orders maybe that’s all they have but holy Digity. Digikey put three tiny components in a 9x9x4 box. Crazy.
 
Dan0h said:
I placed my very first order with Digikey recently. (This Low Tide better be worth it four different vendors and $hipping for these parts…) I know Mouser will sometimes use a bit bigger boxes than they should for small orders maybe that’s all they have but holy Digity. Digikey put three tiny components in a 9x9x4 box. Crazy.
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Thinking about it, they probably think I’m the crazy one. Ordering 3 parts where the shipping is pretty much the same as the parts. 🤦‍♂️
 
Digikey definitely does that, I've received some large boxes from them that weigh nothing. I think the worst I've seen is from Analog Devices though, I'm going to make an unboxing video next time they send me samples. They'll vacuum seal and triple box a single IC and ship it in a 12x6x4 box that they've made weigh a couple pounds. One IC.
 
I've had that happen with an order from Newark. Huge box for something that could have fit into two large flat envelopes...
 
I'm sure packing peanuts are probably awful for the environment, but I save them and reuse them so I don't mind people using them instead of bubblewrap. Then again I save and reuse bubblewrap too :geek:
 
cdwillis said:
I'm sure packing peanuts are probably awful for the environment, but I save them and reuse them so I don't mind people using them instead of bubblewrap. Then again I save and reuse bubblewrap too :geek:
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I was saving bubblewrap to reuse, but my intake is much more than my output, so for a while it was getting out of hand, taking up a section of our garage (and I was starting getting inquiries from my wife about this). I finally felt vindicated when I sold a guitar and used the opportunity to wrap the heck out of it and then stuff every open space of the box with soft padding--I could've thrown the package off a house and the guitar would be unscathed.
 
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Arrow used to be really bad about that, and remember when they offered free overnight shipping on ANY order, no minimum?

I ordered a couple EEPROMs and a microcontroller, like $3 worth of parts... each one arrived in separate boxes big enough to hold hundreds.

I got a single dipswitch in a static safe drawer container that had to have cost them like $5. It wasn't even an ESD sensitive device!

It actually discouraged me from ordering from them because of how much my little orders had to be costing them.
 
cdwillis said:
I'm sure packing peanuts are probably awful for the environment, but I save them and reuse them so I don't mind people using them instead of bubblewrap. Then again I save and reuse bubblewrap too :geek:
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There are some pretty rad biodegradable packing peanuts now. Made of cornstarch I think. They’re technically edible (and taste like “pirate’s booty”, sans cheeze) and they dissolve in water.

My sister is big into collecting ceramic pieces since she’s a ceramicist herself, and one of her favorite artists who I always buy her gifts from ships everything with the cornstarch peanuts. I always just dump them into a bag in the basement when I get something, just in case I ever need to pack something up
 
I would've padded the Digikey order with other things I need/want, such as Triad Magnetics TY-141P for the Broadcast/duocast (get two at least), at least three Triad TY-250Ps for the Transboost, some other spare parts that aren't available elsewhere such as relays etc...
 
Feral Feline said:
I would've padded the Digikey order with other things I need/want, such as Triad Magnetics TY-141P for the Broadcast/duocast (get two at least), at least three Triad TY-250Ps for the Transboost, some other spare parts that aren't available elsewhere such as relays etc...
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True. This is the first time since I started and didn’t know better that I placed such small orders. The low tide is the last in my que so I’m just eager to wrap it up. Normally I try to only order for 3-5 builds at a time.
 
Just got this one today from Amazon. Four "wafer thin" batteries in a box of padding :ROFLMAO:. Usually Amazon has used something more sensible like a padded envelope for orders this size.

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What’s worse than a huge box of air? Installing one of the three items in the huge box of air backwards and so that you have to order another huge box of air……… I really miss the days of having radio shack down the street with all the goodies in stock.
 
Dan0h said:
At some point you have to start to wonder how many things they lose $ on when shipping like this.
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On one hand, I think they have optimized the crap out of everything, and an algorithm has determined that this delivery on this day would be cheapest in this box because it fits on the payload of this truck.

On the other hand, as a practicing software engineer, I have no faith in the algorithm.
 
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