Typical PCB

Suppliers page

AirBorn Electronics is an electronics design and small-run manufacturing company based in North Sydney, Australia. We have been incorporated since 2000, and trading since 1993.
95% of AirBorn Electronics design work is for Australian companies. Some of these businesses then either manufacture these designs themselves, or have the electronics made by a contract manufacturer. Some of our clients have AirBorn Electronics both design and manufacture their product.

Every product needs components, some special, some standard. Purchasing these parts is very important to us. Finding reliable suppliers makes a design much easier to produce. We value our suppliers, however we multi-source. We will get competitive quotes from two, three or more suppliers for parts.

When we produce our design work the Bill of Materials will often quote Digikey, Mouser, or Future part numbers. This is different from competitive quotes! These part numbers are quoted to help contract manufacturers identify components for our boards. We quote the original manufacturers part number also. Kitting and assembly use these part numbers to select the correct parts to make the product, but they are not forced to buy at Digikey prices.

Product Development

When we can, we like to deal with distributors and manufacturers. Buying agents are not as useful unless they are based in Shenzhen and are very responsive and flexible. We prefer to email distributors and manufacturers as we are buying during the design phase - our requirements can change quickly. We want to know technical details, with data sheets and a wide selection of product. We can then search among those choices to decide what best suits our needs.

Manufacturers and Distributors have complete lists and catalogs, buying agents usually require us to specify exactly what we want for them to find it; we work that way less often.

If we are not making the boards ourselves, we always pass on any quotes and email contacts to the manufacturer making the boards - quoting for us may get you orders from a contract manufacturer in Asia.

  • A suppliers quote will be evaluated on:
  • Price
  • MOQ Flexibility
  • Quality of product
  • Performance of product (According to Engineering Specification)
  • Past business
  • Less often: Terms of payment and delivery

AirBorn Purchasing

Please, do not SPAM
No email list / Newsletter
Otherwise, we welcome your email, you can contact us at:
purchasing2013@airborn.com.au Please give a self-introduction, company description, product list in brief, and 3 or 4 best reasons to choose your product.
  • Contacting AirBorn:
  • Don't Spam! One and a followup email is enough.
    If we don't reply we are busy.
  • Don't put us on an email list / Newsletter!
    That wastes our time, we take you off preferred suppliers list.
  • Don't telephone unless we ask you to call us by email.
  • Don't email big files until we have asked for info by email
  • What we purchase:
  • Look at bottom of page (Our "want" list) also
  • Electronic Components
  • PCB mount modules: eg Power supply, Ethernet, Rx/Tx, USB
  • LED strips, RGB with IC at each LED or each 3 LEDs
  • Electo-Mechanical PCB parts: eg Reed switch, Microswitch, Relays
  • Electronic Assembly supplies (small qty): eg Cut and Bend, Bed of Nails
  • Assembly and Kitting services
  • Printed Circuit Board etch
  • What we do not purchase:
  • Complete products - we don't buy and sell completed products. We make and sell PCBs. To sell completed products in Australia you need to contact the buyer for a retail chain.

AirBorn Electronics engineering manager Steven Murray also heads purchasing. If we are looking for components we will do our our best to put it on the list below.

Purchasing dept is looking for:

Cutting profile

Reed Switch Glass envelope, wire leads.
Glass envelope size: 14mm x 2.2mm (approximately, other size ok)
Cut and Bent leads to 20.32mm pitch, 5mm lead length.
10-15AT operate

RGB LED strips 1 IC per LED, WS2801 or equivalent.

LIR2032 LiIon coin cells

8051 type instruction set microprocessors. 1x or 2x clock. 28-44 pin. 16k+ Flash. 1k+ RAM. SPI. A/D, 8 or 10 bit, 4-8 channel.

Injection moulding Small finished enclosures, with design and tooling services available from same company

2.4Ghz Rx/Tx modules Based on microchip MRF24J40MA

Serial to Ethernet modules

©2013 AirBorn - Last updated 19 June 2013