100% this. I shop almost exclusively on digikey at work when I can because their search is *so much* better then everyone else's.
It's certainly not great, but it's definitely the best of any electronics component vendor by a large margin. Mouser's filtering facilities are dramatically worse.
It's probably the best there is, but still leaves a lot to be desired. For example, let's say you want to choose, say, a power MOSFET to handle certain large current. In your design you could use one, or you could use multiple in parallel. Naturally, in this case you want to sort parts by amps per dollar, but you can't sort or filter by mathematical functions of combinations of parameters. So first you have to assume you'll use one mosfet, and find the best one; then repeat assuming you're paralleling two, and so on... Same if you're looking for capacitors and so on. You can rank by dollars, you can rank by Farads, but you can't rank by Farads/dollar, or stored energy (farad-volts-squared) per dollar etc. You could perhaps export to excel and do the search yourself, but sometimes that's not easy.
You can specify value (6 mH) and tolerance (+-10%), but not joint values-and-tolerances. So if you really need at least 6 mH minimum, you technically want to search >6.7 mH +-10% and >6.3 mH +-5%, etc, but that's extra work.
Sometimes the parameter you care about simply isn't available in Digikey's filter, because it's a little obscure like... high-frequency CMRR, or something. So you have to dig into each part datasheet one at a time. That's not really Digikey's fault though; they've tried their best to guess the parameters that are most important, and nobody else has done better.
Where it does get very frustrating is when you need to search through ranges of ranges of values. Like, if your application has a supply voltage that could be between 3.3V and 5V, then you want to filter out parts that require an input voltage higher than 3.3V, or are damaged by an input voltage below 5V. But there's rarely an easy way to do this; often Digikey has one column containing value ranges like "1 - 4V", "1 - 4.1V", "1 - 4.2V"... "1.1 - 4V", "1.1 - 4.1V", and so on. Some of their filters have gotten smarter, but many are still like this, and it takes a long time to go through and select all possible acceptable parts and reject all inadmissible ones. So to save time you end up just guessing at a few likely ranges of values, but then later you discover that there's one really good part that's perfect and cheap but it can tolerate voltages all the way up to 25V for some reason, and you just filtered it out early on because it would have taken too long to scroll that far down.
Searching for connectors can be very frustrating, because there's usually no easy way to look through related parts in a connector family, like to find matching male and female crimp pins and their respective housings.
A lot of frustrations like that are very common, especially when approaching a design from a blank slate.
I think you’re in an uncanny valley where you want to have those powerful search features, but haven’t realized you probably wouldn’t actually use them. For ubiquitous passives, the DK search has all the relevant requirements, and then I’m just picking the manufacturer I have a relationship with. The supply chain on a single passive isn’t worth the headache to save a few percent.
Aside from passives though, you’re never going to get exactly what you want from any reasonably bounded database. For a FET you’re trading footprint, thermal impedance (both up and down), SOA, parasitic capacitances, turn on times.
When I’m picking a key part, I’ll start with a DK search, get a sense for which MFGs are leading the field, make a list of 10 or so parts that look promising, and go through the material on each, filling out my own spreadsheet as I go.
That’s even more true for anything with digital logic, where it wouldn’t be possible to sort by the enumerated features in a meaningful way.
I know I'd use them, because I've had to script them myself. Often this comes into play not for random passives, but for key cost-driving components: a big pulse-capable capacitor (eg. for spot-welding), power mosfet, a precision differential amp, and so on. You can end up in a design space where the one-piece component you want is super expensive and rare, but if you make the same thing out of two or three or twenty parts, you can use cheaper and more common components, and benefit from higher volume pricing to boot.
Gate capacitance is a great example because if I'm considering MOSFETs in parallel I'll want to bound the sum of their capacitances. Again, easy to do with expressions, hard with DK's interface.
What other sites do (eg. TI) is have a bunch of extra search fields but make them collapsible.
Optimizing Digikey prices is a bit of an oxymoron, isn't it? They're expensive because they're fast.
Also, specs aren't well standardized between manufacturers. TI has some good videos explaining what their power MOSFET specs mean and how those definitions vary across the industry.
Aware of all this but none of it justifies a poor part search experience. And this isn't pinching pennies; sometimes we're talking about a two order of magnitude cost difference, especially when your initial hoped-for specs result in just a few options that are all rare military-grade things. Furthermore usually, if part A is $10 on digikey and part B is $1, then even when you find a different supplier or order direct from manufacturers, part B will usually be cheaper than part A on a relative basis, even if the price difference becomes something like $2 vs $0.50.
If there's a part that would have worked better, but you weren't able to find it, that's a problem with search.
Furthermore, cost is just as an example, the same applies if you're looking to minimize package size, temperature rise, power loss, etc. Any component selection is an optimization process and ideally, a good search and filtering will enable you to sort for exactly the specs you need to find the best component candidates more quickly. Maybe that doesn't mean filtering by price, but by (voltage*quiescent current + conduction loss + switching loss), and so on. Or (rise time + propagation delay), etc. Of course you still need to read the datasheet to make sure. We're just talking about better search to find the parts that meet your actual requirement. The point of good search is it should do the mechanical work for you of finding parts, rather than making you try different parameter combinations again and again by hand.
Digikey is still the best, but that doesn't even mean it's good.
Maybe a better way of phrasing what I'm trying to say is it sounds like you're relying too much on metadata search for what you're trying to accomplish. I agree that the search is bad for the way you're using it.
Does scripting get the job done for you? You're at the point where everyone has different objectives and methods, so it's no surprise that you have to make your own solution.
I second this. For some things the search is adequate, for a lot of things it's still quite painful, and it's largely an issue of both coming up with an appropriate structure for the database (which has to represent a huge number of different kinds of components with different parameters and different means of specification) and then actually maintaining the quality of the contents of such database to a level where it is actually useful (it's annoying when an incorrect part shows up because of a typo, misinterpretation of a datasheet, or misclassification of a part, and it's even worse when a part doesn't show up for the same reasons). For another example, noise performance on analog components can be specified in multiple different ways, and different manufacturers or even different parts from the same manufacturer may use different means. Generally these can be converted for a useful comparison, but the people maintaining digikey's database do not have the time or necessarily the skills to actually work this out, and so it's easy to miss the best part when you search because the value isn't even populated.
Finding parts is still the slowest and most critical part of a PCB design, and it's especially difficult for a beginner because it's hard to even know what you might want to look for. Even with years of experience I can find myself spending days just trying to find the right keyword or set of different keywords for some functionality or another, and the search is pretty dang useless for this (maybe it is something which LLMs could help with: parsing and understanding a gigantic database of datasheets which I could query by saying "I want a part that does this that and the other, with specs like so. What part or combination of parts can do this?").
Sadly Autodesk is actively depricating Eagle and I can't recommend F360 for new users.
Digikey Dkred is a heckuva deal, about $1.50 a square inch. Start designing some simple 1x1 inch pcbs, get some for $20. The learning experience alone is worth it. A BOM? what's that?
We actually switched from altium to kicad at work. For the stuff that we build, kicad does everything we need and it's honestly a bit smoother experience than altium imo. I am sure there is stuff where you absolutely need altium (RF stuff?), but I encourage people to look into it.
RF stuff is fine without Altium. You can use QUCS for synthesis and just tape out in Kicad. Basically this without the manual steps and better impedance control! https://youtu.be/drwGvATLNaw
on github openscopeproject there is an interactive BOM for kicad. Opens up a graphical representation of your pcb in chrome and you can highlight all the components
you can see how it works on the KiCad Interactive HTML BOM Plugin Demos
Joe Bob says check it out (for anyone that remembers Joe Bob Briggs)
>Designing a PCB and sending it off to fab is surprisingly accessible and feels like a super power
Relatedly, reflow for assembly makes this feel like a super^2 power. I had always struggled with SMD components with an iron, but once I finally took the plunge and tried reflow I realized I could never go back. Not only is it considerably easier and cleaner (you place the parts, bake it, and do minor touchup with a braid and a hot plate--it just works!) but you can just build so much denser, more technologically advanced devices!
OSH Park is great for small-batch PCBs. A great feature (especially for newbies) is the previews of the board it shows when you upload the Gerber files. I tend to use the OSH Park preview even if I’m getting the actual board made somewhere else (e.g. with a high-frequency substrate) just because it’s such an easy way to do a final check on my Gerbers.
OSHpark boards aren’t that great from experience. Had a couple with mask registration issues and the silk screen and edge cuts are terrible. They’re also slow and expensive. I’ve switched entirely to JLCPCB now which seems to have none of those issues. I’ve done ~20 runs through them including complex multi layer boards for ref.
Isn't JLCPCB's turnaround time even slower than OSH Park, for shipping to the US? I know JLCPCB advertises "24h build time" but that's just physical manufacturing. The shipping is at least 4-5 days(!), as per the last time I got a quote.
I occasionally make PCBs, as a hobby, and I would love to find a manufacturer with a next-day delivery guarantee to the US (California) for simple 2-layer PCBs. I would pay $50 just for shipping for that service, even for just 2-3 small PCBs that fit in an envelope. But to my knowledge this isn't possible. I hate designing a project, and having to wait a whole week to get my PCB. This truly hampers my creative flow... sigh
I just had JLCPCB and OshPark race to get me a board: I used the default jlcpcb settings and all the expedited settings for oshpark.
JLCPCB started making the board in less than a day, was done in two days, and mailed it to me in 3 more days (DHL delivered it a day earlier than expected). They had it in the mail to me before oshpark even sent my design to the fab (which then took a week to make the part). And oshpark was much more expensive (5X for 3 simple 2-layer boards).
I could see getting into a week-cycle (design board over weekend, send to jlcpcb sunday night, get results friday for testing), and then just read Hacker News in the down time.
I only used OSH Park once before switching, but I ended up waiting many data just for them to have enough orders to batch together and send to the manufacturer. In comparison, I can order boards from JLCPCB and components from DK on the sane day, and get both around the same time.
DHL takes 2 days to UK. I usually get PCBs snail mail though. I don't mind waiting because I'm a cheap ass. I've got to the point I don't screw up the PCBs now anyway (every time you screw up write something on a checklist and don't do it again!)
As for next day, you can pay to get anything like that. Years ago I worked for a large company that had an in house PCB fab because it was cheaper than subcontracting out prototypes and production builds to third parties. They were quoting 500-800 GBP a board and much much more for Rogers for the same week production. We are truly in magical times now for how cheap this stuff has got.
The shipping times are why I keep checking in every once in a while if someone came up with an actually decent electrically conductive 3d printer filament.
But it looks like even now at best you can etch two sided boards at home.
I don't want to bother etching at home though. That's just so much work. I was reading lcamtuf's blog the other day https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/designing-your-own-pcbs where he explained the high turnaround time for manufacturing PCBs is why he chooses to design primarily on perfboard, and honestly I am on the verge of being convinced to do the same.
Making PCB's truly is an awesome experience. But I have to disagree with one of the statements(though it is a regional thing):
> Designing a PCB and sending it off to fab is surprisingly accessible and feels like a super power.
That may very well be the case if you live in the US, Germany, France or the UK. Go anywhere else and it's a different story. To give you a bit of context, there is a shop that makes them 15 minutes walk from my place. The prices are ridiculous. If you ever need to go through 3 prototypes to fix some mistakes, you are looking at 3-400 bucks for a total of 9 pcb's. And while you can order from abroad easily, shipping costs+the additional time you need to wait makes the price tags identical. Meaning it's cheaper to get a laser cutter/engraver or an sla 3d printer and make them at home. Sure, they turn our a bit sloppy, no matter how much effort you put into them but it's worth it at the end of the day. Kind of a shame that laser cutter, sla printers, CNC's have become dirt cheap. I would have imagined that some sort of democratization of pcb manufacturing would have happened by now but here we are...
I think most people the US and europe have switched over to chinese manufacturers like jlcpcb or similar for small batch-size PCBs, since they're cheaper and more user friendly. I would've expected them to ship to most of the world, is that not the case?
They claim to do but shipping from China has always been a hellish experience for me. 6 month delays have pretty much been the standard. And if that's not bad enough, filling up paperwork for the customs is just as shitty of an experience. Sadly hacking pcbs together in my basement/attic/on the roof is the least painful experience. The annoying bit is really the time I spend doing it. But living on the last floor and being the only one with a direct access to the roof is definitely a privilege: ferric chloride truly smells like ass.
Slightly tangential, but when I read something like "my first PCB" I immediately think of drawing the circuit on a PCB with a permanent marker, letting it bath in FeCl3 solution, then drilling the holes with a mini drill.
Apparently those times are over now, but I still think that it would be faster (and subjectively more fun) for such a simple circuit.
You can still do that- or even just mill away copper clad- but dealing with solvents is messy, and the process is fairly time-consuming, labor intensive, and is useful mainly for fairly simple designs (this board qualifies).
Back in 2007 when I did my first board, the only option I could afford was a US fab that had a "33 each" special. You got a 2layer board with HASL finish and had to order 3 of them. So it cost $100.
If you were academic they'd let you order just 1. That's what I did.
I remember being at school eating lunch when my brand new flip phone rings, and it's a sales rep from Advanced Circuits asking me about my estimated annual volume, while my friends where throwing pizza slices at the lunch table.
It seems like a non coercive type of education, where people follow their curiosity and at the end finnish up with something tangible.
I honestly think if education is to change for the better, it should turn into something like many Recurse Centers, for Music, Technology, Medicine, Pharmacy, Art etc.
And the kinds of stories, like the one linked always make me think that I am right. I like listening to them.
My dream is to one day make enough money and build something like Recurse Center in my country.
> I passionately hate Digikey’s search interface. It is shockingly bad at having the right metadata for filtering to be effective.
I disagree wholeheartedly. Digikey has amongst the best interface for parts searching that I have ever used.
What exactly about the interface do you dislike?