Hi welcome to the Eev blog an Electronics Engineering Video blog of interest to anyone involved in Electronics Design. I'm your host Dave Jones Hi It's time for another drive time rant this time around. I Wanted to talk about free samples because there's a lot of people out there who get sucked into this free sample cycle and they think it's the greatest thing since you know, sliced bread. Oh look, the company is going to send me chips for free.

You know, Fantastic. You might think, well, there's lots of traps when you get sucked into the free sample cycle. Now one of the first things is is that it can take a considerable amount of time to get free samples. There are exceptions to this.

there are companies that do it really quick, but generally speaking, you are not going to get them as quick as you can through the component. Distributors You know Digi Key Mouser Fels Element 14 RS those sort of ones because they can offer same or next day service on all their in stock. Parts Why not use it now? Especially here in Australia Um, they offer free delivery on anything regardless of the order size. so you can just buy one chip for $2 and they'll Cy it to you next day for free.

It's fantastic. Why would you bother with uh, free samples? Really? when it only cost you a couple of bucks? Don't be a tight ass. now. One of the other major uh things with Uh samples is that it's uh.

there's a lot of hustle as well. Um, especially in places like Australia where often you won't get the samples direct from the manufacturer, you'll have to go through the local distributor and the local distributor give you a third degree. They you know they want to know what project you're working on, how exactly the part's going to fit in, how many you're going to want. You have to fill out a damn entire survey before you can get your free parts and then they want to deliver it to you for you know they want to.

Oh, look, I'll drop by and I'll you know and we can talk about your project. and if we can help you with other parts, No go away. God Don't want to waste hours of your time dealing with bloody reps and things like that, so just don't do it from a hassle point of view. really.

Um, and uh, the other, uh, well, one of the major things with samples is that um, you have if unless you actually go through and do the research on each part you get as a sample, well, is that a viable part? I've talked about this before. you might design the part into your design. You might think oh, great. I'll design in this part because it's free I Can get you know, five free samples from the manufacturer? Well, that's great if you're only going to make one or five.

Well, what happens if you finish your project? It's a winner and you want to go make a 100 of them or a th000 or 10,000 What do you do? Well, you got to cross your fingers and hope that Parts actually available in volume in you know, in the time frame that you actually want at a at a reasonable price in volume. So God don't get sucked into it. Um, as I've said before, a lot of uh, you know, a good lot of the design process is actually selecting the right part. and if you bypass in terms of price, volume availability compatible Footprints all sorts of things.

If you bypass all that and make your decision based solely on whether or not you can get free samples, well, you're going to come a gutsa Okay, and that's Australian Talk for um, you know you. You're uh, you're going to come undone basically down the track. There's going to be a catch which is going to get you so don't fall into the free sample cycle. You get what you pay for.

Really. Remember that Kitties.