How to: Get Free Electronic Parts for your Projects

Don’t you hate it when you’re working on your next project and realize you’re short a resistor or capacitor?  You have two choices:  Buy online, pay for shipping, and wait a week or go to your local Radio Shack and pay ridiculous prices to acquire what you need. Forget that!  Go to these companies, simply request free samples, and they’ll send you free parts – Sometimes even overnight.

Comment below and let us know about your experiences as you request samples.  If you’d like to add your company to the list, Contact us.

Push Buttons & Switches:

• Bulgin – Free $20 stainless steel push buttons!
• Sorenson
• Apem
• NKK
• eSwitch

General Components:

• Digi-Key – They’ll send you one or two dirt cheap components, but don’t push it.
• Beganto

Free LED Samples:

• Bivar
• SunLED International and USA
• Sensitron
• Philip’s Lumileds
• DDPLED
• MarkTech
• Buy 100 LEDs for $7

Free IC and Microcontroller Samples:

• Atmel
• Maxim – Good experience with them, samples arrived in about a week.
• MillMax
• Freescale – Quality experience, arrived in a few days.
• Cirrus Logic
• STMicro

Project Boxes/Enclosures:

• PacTec
• Serpac

Free Semiconductor Samples:

• Texas Instruments – Great service – Samples took about 4 days to arrive.
• National – Absolutely fantastic – they ship your samples overnight!
• Analog Devices
• Microchip
• Zilog
• System General
• Supertex

Need more? Just head on over to GlobalSpec and type in the component you need.  They’ll provide hundreds of companies which supply the part you’re looking for.  Go to their website and contact them for free samples – Here’s a quick search I did for switches. If all else fails, no big deal, just head on over to Ebay, they have a ton of parts way cheaper than Radio Shack or Home Depot.

*Note:* We’ll be continuously updating this list so be sure to bookmark this page or subscribe to AMBROSIA'S ELCTRONIC DREAM WORLD so you don’t miss out!