Purchasing an Encoder? Check out Amazon.com

July 9, 2014

Previously focused on consumer products, the online shopping site Amazon.com also provides fairly highly engineered devices. 

Over the last few years, Amazon.com has become a major go-to shopping site for consumers because all it takes is a click or two to buy just about anything ranging from books to fashionable clothing, cameras, cell phones, tablets, scanners, and digital music.

In an interesting twist, the site has also been selling fairly highly engineered components, some of which would typically be of more interest to technical types at OEMs whose job it is to optimize—through instrumentation, control, and automation technologies—the performance of machines for industrial manufacturing applications.

For example, devices that Posital-Fraba sells on Amazon include its IXARC rotary encoders and TILTIX inclinometers.

Says Jarrod Orszulak of Posital-Fraba, users should first employ the Product Finder tool on the Posital website and narrow their search by specifying product attributes such as measurement range, electronic interface, mechanical interface, and level of environmental protection. This gives users the product numbers for the items they need, which they would then use in placing their orders through Amazon’s Industrial and Scientific store.

According to Posital, the arrangement gives users a convenient and cost-transparent way to order parts, while reducing its sales costs, especially for small orders.