Hi Tom (et al),

The problems we had were:

1.  Price, they tended to be 2x more expensive than the other vendors.
2.  Delivery, we had a tough time getting them to agree to a delivery
schedule.
3.  Handling SMT parts.  They wanted us to pay for their fixturing.
4.  Quality.  They wouldn't give us any guarantee to quality as they would
be pulling chips out of tubes/off reels and they wouldn't guarantee that
they would orientate them correctly, fill every position of the tape or
guarantee that every part put in would be programmed.

The problems we had really came out when we were ready to cut a P.O. and we
started to negotiate the contract.  This was a very disappointing experience
for us as we've never really had any other issues with Digi-Key.  There was
a real CYA mentality with the programming folks there and we just didn't get
a good feeling that they were comfortable with doing it.

With respect to Future-Active, they've done over 60K PICmicro MCUs for the
robots (47K+ SMT) and we haven't discovered an error yet.  Our first P.O.
with them had some bumps with the contract when the person we were dealing
with left the company, but the next four times we've gone back have been
flawless.

Of course, YMMV.

myke
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Messenger" <krist@THEGRID.NET>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 2:31 PM
Subject: PIC: Myke Predkos comments


> Regarding getting distributors to supply programmed chips, you wrote:
>
> >Ben Wirz and I have gone through some major headaches getting PIC16C505s
and
> >PIC16C57s programmed for the "TAB Electronics Build Your Own Robot Kit".
> >Microchip will do it, if you have quantities over 10K and you can wait 10
> >weeks (they will treat the parts as separate part number and you can
repeat
> >order without having to resend the object files).  The best vendor we've
> >found is Future-Active (Digi-Key was surprisingly bad).  We've also
worked
> >through a ton of small, crappy ones.
>
> My company was looking into having Digikey do this for us. The price
looked
> good: twentyfive cents each. We have not yet done anything other than
> obtain the pricing for the service.  What was your experience with them
> that you didn't like?
>
> Tom M.
>
> --
> http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic:
> [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads
>
>
>
>

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic:
[PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads