Hardware: Storing Resistors and Capacitors

Well, sure have not posted much lately. Had a very busy holiday with family and friends, and did not get in much hacking time.

One thing that I DID do was organize my resistors and capacitors. To do this, I labeled a 24 (actually 25, with one not used) parts drawer with the standard 5% values (one set for resistors, one for non electrolytic capacitors): 10    11    12    13    15    16    18    20    22    24    27    30  33    36    39    43    47    51    56    62    68    75    82    91.

Then I sorted all the parts into the associated bins. They go into the bin by 2 digits of the value, multiplier ignored. Otherwise you would need 1240 drawers! Then when you need a 1K resistor you dig into the 10 drawer and all you have to so is look for the last band to tell it from 10, 100, 10K, etc.

In some cases I had too many of some values, so more than 5 of each value went into labeled freezer bags in a shoe box. Much better than digging around in a HUGE box of resistors with nothing sorted.

For Electrolytic capacitors, label 24 drawers: 1.0 10 100 1000 1.5 15 150 1500 2.2 22 220 2200 3.3 33 330 3300 4.7 47 470 4700 6.8 68 680 6800. You can do this as Electrolytic has wider (usually 20%) tolerance.

Next stop, the semiconductors.


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