Buying & Application Guides
Practical reference material for identifying and cross-referencing industrial parts — no fabricated specs, only standards-based facts and data pulled from our own catalog.
Allen-Bradley Lifecycle Status
Rockwell Automation publishes a lifecycle status for every Allen-Bradley catalog number, and the four statuses mean very different things for a plant holding spares. This guide explains what each one means, what Rockwell’s own migration path is for the families most often hit, and what your options are once a part is genuinely out of production.
Fanuc Lifecycle Status
Fanuc hardware outlives its production run by decades, and the machines it sits in outlive that again. Sourcing a discontinued Fanuc drive, motor or control board is a different problem from sourcing a discontinued PLC, mostly because Fanuc does not publish a public lifecycle database. This guide explains what the part numbers tell you and where the parts actually come from.
Obsolete GE Fanuc / Emerson PLC
Series 90-30 and 90-70 control lines are still running in plants across Canada decades after the brand on the front of the rack stopped existing in that form. This guide covers what the IC-prefix part numbers mean, which platform you are actually holding, and where the parts come from now.
Obsolete Reliance / Baldor Drives
Legacy Reliance and Baldor drives are among the most-requested discontinued items we see, and among the hardest to identify from a part number alone. This guide covers what to read off the nameplate, why a like-for-like replacement is rarer than people expect, and what the practical routes are.
Obsolete Danfoss VLT
Danfoss VLT drives have an unusually long service life, which means a large installed base of units whose generation is no longer built. This guide covers how the ordering numbers work, what to send us, and what your options are when a drive or a control card is no longer available.
Bearing Interchange Guide
Deep-groove ball bearing part numbers look manufacturer-specific, but for the standard 60xx/62xx/63xx series the boundary dimensions are set by ISO 15 — every major maker builds to the same bore/OD/width, so a bearing from one brand almost always has a direct, documented equivalent from another. This guide explains how to read the designation and find the equivalent.
Mounted Bearing & Pillow Block Guide
A pillow block, flange unit, or take-up bearing is really two parts sold as one assembly: a cast housing plus a self-aligning insert bearing. The insert's bore is coded using the same industry-standard conventions across SKF, FYH, IPTCI, Sealmaster, and other major mounted-bearing makers — once you can read the part number, finding an equivalent from a different brand is straightforward.
IEC Contactor Selection Guide
Unlike deep-groove bearings, IEC motor contactors don't share a common part-numbering system across brands — Allen-Bradley's Bulletin 100-C, Schneider Electric's TeSys, and Siemens' SIRIUS 3RT are each proprietary. What is standardized across all three is the IEC 60947-4-1 utilization-category rating system, so the reliable way to find an equivalent is to match by rating, not by translating a catalog number.
Pneumatic Fitting Thread Guide
A "1/4-inch fitting" is not one thing — NPT, BSPP, and BSPT are three different thread standards that all use the same nominal fraction sizes but are not dimensionally interchangeable. Forcing the wrong one into a port can look like it is threading correctly right up until it leaks, binds, or damages the port. This guide explains how the three standards differ and how to tell them apart before you order.
Wire Ferrule Sizing Guide
Ferrule colors follow a widely-used reference standard (DIN 46228-4), and matching them by color alone is tempting — but not every manufacturer applies the palette identically, and getting it wrong means a loose crimp or a ferrule that will not seat in the terminal at all. This guide explains how ferrule sizing actually works and how to verify a match instead of guessing by color.
Roller Chain Sizing Guide
ANSI roller chain and sprockets are numbered by a simple, published rule — divide the chain number by 8 and you have the pitch in inches. Because that rule is a real mechanical standard (ASME/ANSI B29.1), a #50 chain and #50 sprocket from two different manufacturers are genuinely interchangeable at the pitch and roller diameter, unlike some of the other cross-brand comparisons on this site. The one place this trips people up is confusing it with British Standard (ISO 606) chain, which uses a different numbering rule entirely.
V-Belt Cross-Section Guide
Classical and narrow (wedge) V-belts are each built to a small, published set of cross-section dimensions under the ANSI/RMA (Rubber Manufacturers Association / Association for Rubber Products Manufacturers) IP-20/IP-22 standards — so a belt built to a given letter or number by one manufacturer has the same top width and height as the same designation from another. What actually causes cross-brand ordering mistakes is the length number, which is worked out differently for classical belts than for narrow ones.
Hydraulic Fitting Guide
The most common hydraulic fitting mix-up is not a thread mismatch — it is assuming matching threads mean a compatible seal. JIC 37° flare and SAE O-ring boss (ORB) fittings share identical Unified thread specifications at the same dash size, but seal on completely different surfaces, and forcing one into the other's port causes a leak or a blown seal under pressure, not a clean fit. This guide covers how to tell them apart, how the dash-size and thread system works, and how NPTF differs from the plain NPT covered in our <a href="/guides/pneumatic-fitting-thread-guide/">pneumatic fitting thread guide</a>.
Allen-Bradley Bulletin 300 Contactors
Bulletin 300 catalog numbers differ by only a letter or a trailing digit, and those differences change the coil or the configuration. Every Bulletin 300 number we currently list is grouped below by NEMA size, each linking to its own page.