Finding Parts Part Search
How do I Search?

The most direct way to find a specific part is to use the "Search" tool. The "Search" tool is available on the upper right hand corner of every page on the Value Plastics website. Just click where it says "Search Parts" and start typing. It looks like this:

  

Due to the complexity of the programming on the Value Plastics website, we have disabled the "Enter" button on most pages.  This will prevent you from unintentionally submitting a form and navigating away from the page you are on.  This means that after you enter something in the search parts form, you must click the "Submit" icon to get your results. In the image below, the submit button is highlighted in yellow.

   


What can I enter?

There are several ways to get part results with the search tool.

  • Part Number: You can enter a specific part number like "FTLL210-1".  This will return one result that matches that part number exactly.
  • Partial Part Number: You can enter the beggining of any part number like "FTLL210". In this case, it will return all FTLL210 parts in all available materials.
  • Part Description: You can enter words that describe the group of parts you are interested in. For example, you could enter "Female Luer White Nylon". In this case, it will return 67 results, or all parts that have "Female", "Luer", "White", and "Nylon" in the part description.

How do I use the Results?

After you submit a search, you will be directed to the search results page. This page has several controls on it that help you find the parts you are looking for. For example, if we searched on "lock ring", the search results page would look like this:

   

Lets look at this page in detail.

First the header. The header shows you the following items:
  1. This shows the number of pages that the search returned, and which page you are currently on.
  2. This shows the total number of parts that were returned from the search.
  3. This shows the number of parts on each page. You can change this number to show more parts on each page.
  4. These buttons help you navigate through the pages returned from the search results.

   

 

Now the result lines. Each result line is full of information:

  1. Part number
  2. Part Description
  3. This section tells you if the part is in stock, and if not, when will it be available. Additionally, the minimum order quantity listed in red below the availability.
  4. A picture of the part.
  5. A link to a part drawing.
  6. A button to add this part to your cart.
   

Part Configurator

On many content pages throughout the Value Plastics website you will see either an icon or a full bar that links to the Part Configurator. They look like this:

Configurator Icon:

   

Full Bar:

   

The part configurator is a tool that helps you find parts based on the shared characteristics of those parts. It is a very easy to use, yet very effective way of finding parts without having to know what the parts are called. The first step is to open the configurator. To open this tool, you can click anywhere on the closed configurator bar. Once it is open it looks like this:

   

There are only a few places to click on this tool, but each click returns a lot of information about your selection. If you look at the picture above, you will notice that the column for "Part Family" already has values in it that represent the major part families of Value Plastics parts. If you were to select one of the families, the next section "Category" would fill with the categories that belong to the family you selected. For example, if you were to select "Luer Fitting",  the "Category" column would fill with all of the "Luer Fitting" "Categories". Below is a description of the data that is returned once you select an item from a column.

Part Configurator Data:

   

  1. This section keeps track of the selections you have made.
  2. This number indicates the total number of parts that fit the selection you have made.
  3. This is the next selection to make. Notice there is no highlighted line or a part count below this column. This is because you have not yet selected a category.
  4. Clicking this button during the selection process will bring you to the page that displays the results of your selections.


As you select more columns, the number of parts will narrow. During any of the 5 stages of narrowing the part results, you can click the "Click Here to Display Parts" bar. Here is an example of a configurator search narrowed down to 4 parts:

   

And here are the results of this configurator session (for more information on the results screen, please read the "Part Search" section of this guide):


   

Notice that the configurator has been included at the top of your results page and all of your selections are still selected. In fact, any page that you go to that has the configurator on it will still have your selections saved and the configurator open. You can close the configurator by clicking its power icon: