[zinekeller]

> I hear they aren't very good outside the US though, which is a shame.

I hope that this comment won't be interpreted harshly, but their familiarity with mainly American measurements really handicaps them elsewhere. It's not really their fault, but counterintuitively from where I am it's still miles better than other (domestic or international) suppliers for smaller quantities.

[theduemmer]

I was more referring to issues with shipping and ordering outside of the US. But you are entirely right about them focusing on American measurements, their selection of metric parts is much weaker and more expensive than their customary (main?) Sizes of parts. I do wonder if they are or will be working on improving that any time soon.

[stjohnswarts]

What do you mean familiarity with American measurements? Unit conversion is a solved problem.

[apendleton]

I assume they meant that they default to making things that come in imperial-unit sizes (e.g., quarter-inch nuts instead of 6mm ones or whatever). It's not really practical to mix and match.

[modriano]

McM is just a warehousing and distribution company; they don't make any of the things they sell. They define products by specs rather than manufacturer (is few brand names are used in the catalog/site), which makes it much easier to stock parts of every nearly every flavor (imperial, metric, dozens of odd pipe threading standards, thousands of ASME/ANSI/DIN/other-standards-body-standards).

McM absolutely mixes and matches.

[brirec]

> It's not really practical to mix and match.

Tell that to my computer, with both 6-32 and M3 screws.

[kube-system]

Tell that to my computer, with a bunch of stripped out threads.

[dendrite9]

So both types of screws work?

[kube-system]

Only if you try hard enough

[technobabbler]

Tell that to NASA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...

[Aeolun]

It’s also a problem that shouldn’t exist any more in this day and age.