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.
Email us 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:
General Components:
Free LED Samples:
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:
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 HacknMod so you don’t miss out!
December 31st, 2009
Freescale is awesome, they sent me two accelerometers using priority shipping free of charge and I didn’t even have to deal with a person. I’m a student (which they knew) so this was a lot of help.
Anyone ever get samples from Atmel?
January 2nd, 2010
For free product enclosures, check out polycase.
January 2nd, 2010
I don’t suggest getting free samples from Atmel. I “ordered” a couple atmega 168 samples which took 2 months to ship. I had forgotten about them by the time they actually arrived.
January 3rd, 2010
Chech out http://www.squidoo.com/realstuff4free It will tell you were to get free products, and it ships within 7-10 day upon approved request.
And yes I have got stuff from so many different places, I built my computer tower for $12! Also fixed alot of thing that should have been costly for free.
January 10th, 2010
Before ordering free samples you should be aware that this is potentially an unethical practice. The intention is that these samples get supplied to engineers working on a product who are potentially going to purchase a large quantity of parts once the product is manufactured. In other words this is done for the convenience of developers who are large customers. If hobbyists abuse this then the samples will disappear and nobody wins. They are not giving away $20 pushbuttons just because they like you (and would you give them away either?) If you don’t want you conscience to bother you then enter “personal” or “student” (if you are doing this for a school project) into the company field and see if they still send it. And actually read their conditions of sale before clicking the “agree” button to see if you really qualify.
January 11th, 2010
Of course. It’s always important to be ethical as Dan mentioned. The companies know that as hobbiests or students, the more familiar you are with their products, the more likely you’ll use them in the future (when you become an engineer, perhaps). So they see it as an investment in you. Win-win for everyone.
January 26th, 2010
Has anyone got anything from bulgin?
January 26th, 2010
Yeah, I got two of their super-sleek aluminum buttons with the illuminated light rings around the edges. Takes a while to arrive though.
January 27th, 2010
Note, National.com charges shipping for the samples that amount to the price of the chip. Unless you have a corporate email address, which I am not sure how they decide on that. Anyone had any luck with a particular email?
January 28th, 2010
Pretty much anything besides @gmail, @hotmail, @common-address works. They only charge shipping on non-common parts (from my experience anyways)
February 5th, 2010
thank you joe!
September 20th, 2010
Do you think it’s valid outside US? Latin America for example?
September 20th, 2010
Depends on the manufacturer, but usually yes.
September 29th, 2010
Freescale is awesome, they sent me two accelerometers using priority shipping free of charge and I didn’t even have to deal with a person. I’m a student (which they knew) so this was a lot of help.
May 21st, 2011
I don’t consider getting a free sample now and again unethical, as I will usually buy a companies products in the future if they send me a free sample. I also don’t think they are JUST concerned with the bulk buyers. The hobbyist market may not be as big as the commercial market, but it’s fairly large and catered to. Hence why most electronics and related retailers have dumped “minimum orders” which were standard for so long in the past.