Maxim IC frustration - hard to find components

I don't know why Maxim makes it so difficult for small companies to design with their components. I am developing a new consumer electronics product. Unfortunately, I planned to use 4 Maxim chips that are hard to find in small quantities (1-40). Standard distributors like Arrow, Mouser and Digikey don't cary them. These components are excellent matches for my design needs. Maxim offers some of their ICs for purchasing on their website, but not the ones listed below. Perhaps someone can recommend a broker or exchange website where rare Maxim components can be purchased at reasonable prices. I would love to find alternatives to these components if someone can offer some advice. National, Linear and Analog devices simply cant match the selection, sophistication and price of switching regulators and battery charging ICs. Please feel free to recommend other IC manuafacturers that specialize in these types of components.

DS2745 Low Cost I2C Battery Monitor (chosen for its ability to cumulatively measure voltage & current to estimate battery life, + its low cost, $1@1K)

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MAX1555 Dual-Input, USB/AC Adapter, 1-Cell Li+ Battery Chargers (chosen for its ability to intelligently charge a 1-cell lithium from a wall adapter or USB port 5v rail, low cost .85@1K)
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MAX1522 Simple SOT23 Boost Controllers (chosen for its high frequency operation - small inductor, only a few external components, low cost $1.07@1K)

MAX1724 1.5=B5A IQ, Step-Up DC-DC Converters in Thin SOT23-5 (chosen for its ultra low quiescent current, only needs a 10uh inductor, has built in FET, very few external components, low cost $1.45 @ 1K)

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Reply to
techman41973
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Maxim isn't aiming for your market. They design these chips and hope someone orders a GAZILLION. The rest never go anywhere.

Reply to
Brian

Don't worry. They make it equally impossible for large companies.

They don't carry them because Maxim doesn't make (perhaps design) them unless there is a huge demand.

Exactly. Go elsewhere.

Reply to
krw

I have been the same route with a Li-Ion charger design about three years back. Having done the rounds of chip types we - like you - settled quite quickly on the Maxim product for its functionality. Unfortunately Maxim want to remain strictly a manufacturer, and the distribution chain which hangs off their coat-tails isn't the most small-customer--focussed system you'll find. Here in Australia the "official" distributor (Arrow) won't even break the factory MOQ. We were fortunate that we located one offshore (NZ actually) Maxim reseller who did carry the required IC and who actually broke the FMOQ down to something sensible - ten off. Otherwise we would have had to compromise our design objective by choosing another chip/supplier combination - and Arrow also represent LT here :-(

(snip chip description)

We checked several offshore suppliers. Maxim in Singapore looked promising but the unzudders were a tad more responsive and I found their "quaint" version of the English language easier to deal with that the Asian version.

Back to the web, check out their food chain ALL the way down, and you may just strike it lucky.

Reply to
budgie

That's why I just don't even bother to consider that Maxim exists anymore when looking for chips.

Reply to
CC

What a great testimonial for cool parts. What a great warning to stay the hell away!!! The bean counters (always a very bad sign) at Maxim simply chose to ignore the massive collection of products that start small, and then build big. Sadly, it's at their peril, because even big boys recognize a failed approach and steer clear, for fear they'll choose a part and after a year or two find it discontinued by the same bean-counter mentality.

Either you orient yourself towards your customer, or you don't.

Reply to
Winfield Hill

You must be new here.

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Old joke: "How much are you asking for tomatoes." "50 cents a pound." "50 cents a pound?!--the guy down the road said his were only 35." "Why didn't you buy them there?" "He was out of tomatoes." "Ah, that's different. When I'm out, mine are only 25 cents a pound." . . Interesting how you put sci.electronics.design twice in the To: line.

Reply to
JeffM

Yet I have had Maxim sales guys tell me -- with straight faces -- that Maxim never obsoletes a design.

As far as I can tell this is true -- the just don't make a run until they have orders for 50000 pieces.

There are a few Maxim parts that just cannot be lived without; for those you need to order a years supply a year in advance. Then just wait -- when the other 49800 get ordered they'll start building your parts.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

Hmmm....I have said the same thing a number of times - and got a lot of static.

Reply to
Robert Baer

I had a long conversation with the reps for Maxim whilst at my last job, perhaps 4 years ago, and specifically asked them about the : 'We don't care about you unless you order a million and accept 16 week lead times' attitude. They assured me that they really had reformed, but the reality of the situation is they have not.

My supply chain here has specifically asked I not use Maxim devices as they find it nigh on impossible to get the parts. I find this sad and amusing as Maxim sends me their 'engineering journal' touting their great parts, but they just don't seem to want to sell them.

As for samples, you can get them, but you'll get the third degree over it (don't want to give anything away too easily, do we).

As Win noted, it's silly to ignore the small customer that could become a large customer. That's *precisely* how TI has now re-oriented itself, and they are now posting record profits.

TI competes directly with Maxim (and has second sourced a lot of their parts), and I find the support superb. Even though dev kits are nominally $49 - $99 for most stuff, my FAEs get them to me for nothing, because they *want me to design their parts in* and they know I won't if I have a supply problem.

Contrasts in suppliers, indeed.

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

Yeah- but you're that Clarence nutcase troll...how's the speech impediment coming along.

Reply to
Fred Bloggs

That's a bunch of bull, you're not paying attention.

Maxim is not making them because the market is using a superior alternative, get a clue.

Reply to
Fred Bloggs

In message , dated Mon, 7 Aug 2006, Fred Bloggs writes

Well, that's true. Maxim doesn't seem to be making them at all.

Reply to
John Woodgate

Hello Pete,

Or, to put it succinctly: If you don't orient yourself towards the customer, somebody else will. However, it usually requires an upper management change to truly understand that and most of all, live it.

Samples usually aren't the problem. The problems I found were when my clients wanted to order the first reels and all they heard at the other end of the phone line was some hard swallowing.

So far I have only designed out Maxim parts, mostly because of serious logistics problems. I then always try my best to find a jelly bean solution where every part in it is cheap and has half a dozen sources.

Advice to the OP: Learn how to do things without panacea chips, learn discrete designs. It's amazing what you can do these days. Discrete solutions are often significantly lower in cost than that nice cool chip and also not larger in real estate. The only downside is you'd have to deal with 0402 parts or smaller and eyes don't get better with age.

That's what many EU manufacturers do not understand. It is also the reason why I typically don't use their parts anymore in designs and why I wouldn't buy their stock.

Reply to
Joerg

Not my (limited) experience - I've used Maxim Direct in the UK and it has always worked well.

Reply to
Tim

I agree with everything you say here, with an addition. There is _very_ little, if anything, that Maxim makes that can not be done [at least as well] with devices from another manufacturer. Those other manufacturers are reaping the benefit of Maxim's short sightedness, imo. That goes for just about all manufacturers, obviously.

Power, thermal management, serial drivers, hotswap - you name it, there are at least 3 competitors in the majority of what they make, although not always fit/form/function compatible. That makes little difference at original design though.

I must sadly agree abut EU manufacturers too - I would use them, but I just can't get them to understand that I am not going to buy 10k of something for a prototype. So they lose the design. I don't know if that's your experience with them; it certainly is mine, in general.

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

"Fred Bloggs" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@nospam.com...

There's a bit of a teaser ;)

Reply to
Frank Bemelman

Power TI, Linear, National, Analog devices, to name a few. All these have products equal or superior to Maxim.

Battery charging. See the list above. I use a BQ24103 [TI] in a couple of products, and it works exactly as advertised.

There are, of course, many other manufacturers - these are just the really big outfits.

As an example on price, I am using the TPS65020 as the regulator for a PXA based design. 3 switchers, 2 LDOs, multiple pin-assignable default settings, I2C controllable Vout. Budgetary $3.75 / 1k qtys. That's pretty competitive as far as I can find.

Want a highend controller that will handle 10A load steps without even a hiccup? Try the LTC1735. Not the cheapest, but a damn good piece of work.

No - there is nothing that Maxim makes that others can't do just as well (perhaps with the addition of a few external components on occasion, but that goes both ways).

Cheers

PeteS

Reply to
PeteS

techman41973 @yahoo.com MULTI-POSTED:

...A prime example of why multi-posting is a bad idea. Read more here:

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*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-appear+*-proper-answer-*-*-*-given+much-easier-*-*-*-*-what's-going-on+*-frowned-on+*-correcting+*-polite-*-mention-*-*-*-*-*-*-*+*-*-_perfect_-*-*-*-*+*-Followup-To-*+*-*-*-too-lazy-*-*-*-*-*-appropriate-*+Just-because-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-does-not-mean-*-*-*-*-*-*+*-*-*-*-two-groups-*-*-aren't-*-different If we can't convince you not to pay any attention to this pseudo-manufacturer, a vendor (Patrick Cheung, Hong Kong) did respond in your parallel (multi-posted) thread:
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snipped-for-privacy@rain.i-cable.com

Reply to
JeffM

Hello PeteS,

In my cases the usual scenario is that none of the single-source parts makes it, no matter from whom. Whenever possible I try to use standard logic chips, FETs, BJT and passives to do just about anything. There are designs still in production where close to 100 parts could have been replaced with a few chips and only a dozen passives. But I didn't and the clients are happy about it. Typically I never hear any mention of logistics problems again after such re-designs.

It's worse. For example, when I tried to obtain a partial reel of the Infineon FET BSP297 they really blew it. Didn't call back, promised to send samples but failed to do so, etc. It's not that I wanted freebies. I told them I would pay whatever it takes to get them to the US. Well, they lost that design-in and I haven't considered their other offerings since.

The sad thing is that some of them are real technological leaders. Infineon, for example, offers a great selection of hotrod RF transistors, diodes and other useful parts. Truly mouth-watering stuff. But what good does it do if you can't buy them at Digikey and they don't understand how marketing to design engineers works?

Then there is the poor performance of many of their web sites but that's a whole 'nother matter.

Reply to
Joerg

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