Thanks again for your videos, when I first started (11 years old) I used egg cartons to store the parts that cut out of TV chassis I took from our TV repair shop's trash.... Oh The Good Old Days! Carl
I feel your pain lol. I have about 20 of those organizers full. You remember those cardboard boxes that set on the shelves at the parts house? With the small vanilla envelopes? I have dozens of those plus piles of boxes full of mixed parts. Most of the time when I order stuff a week later I find a hundred of the same part. Thanks for sharing Bob
As an alternative to the metal cabinet with clear drawers shown here, "Keter" makes a toolbox-style parts box with 24 reddish-brown, *removable*, cup-like individual plastic parts bins (with rounded bottoms too), and a BIG handle for easy carrying. About $18 at Walmart. I use these for organizing screws and nails and hardware for various carpentry and home-improvement projects, but they'd work well for storing caps and resistors in an organized fashion. Only drawback is that they're somewhat heavy. Designed in such a way that even if you accidentally forget to latch the box shut, you can pick it up and carry it without spilling/dumping the contents on the ground. All tool and tackle boxes should be "fail-safed" in this manner; I had a boatside/dockside incident with a large Plano fishing tackle box when I was a kid that still makes me agitated to think about it.....
Thanks for that Bob.. Being organised with components seems a very sensible, logical and time saving proposition. The issue for me is lack of space to accommodate enough storage facilities, but hey, it's just another problem looking for a solution as they say in all the best corporations 🤣...
I am impressed. So far I thought i was the only one who got stuff from Newark Electronics. I like test tubes to store resistors in.........if I can get them cheap.
When I started out I kept my resistors in parts drawers and had them sorted by the First color band. Later on I sorted them by value and before I knew it I had too many and started poking around on parts storage. I ended up using Coin Envelopes and a huge Trading Card Box. I have them sorted by value, wattage and type. I also ended up sorting everything like that and only use the Parts drawers for the most common use stuff and parts that are too big or awkward to fit such as ICs. The handy thing with the Envelopes is I written down the mini Datasheets on them for Transistors, Diodes and such. What I would love to find at a fair price is one of those Library index card cabinets (Apothecary Drawers). Been debating to buy a cheap Table Saw and and build one.
Aahhh, organizing parts. Always an issue. For what it's worth I have found it most convenient to organize first tier by power rating, then by value under that. Same for caps, voltage groups first, then by capacitance. Good luck with your task! Like your channel!
I have organizer cabinets, but I'm still pretty much working out of paper bags...not an easy task to find particular value components. One day I hope to try and organize my parts. You now have to really get organized because Shadow is now your producer :)
Ah yes, Organization, the thing we ALL need to do, but the thing most of us put off as long as possible. I have 2 resistor cabinets, one for all the standard 5 and 10% resistors, and another cabinet of 1% 25 PPM drift coefficient capacitors for broadcast VTR servo systems. For capacitors, I have one for film and Mica, another for electrolytic and wet tantalum. Ace hardware has a few organizers that are nice, but Harbor Freight has a lot more options, and if you chose carefully there are ones that are of good quality.
I generally sort mine by the third color band so rather then a range of values in each drawer I have a range of decades. Seven drawers will cover black to blue then it is usually pretty quick to grab what I need from any drawer, I just need to look for the first two colors. I have a row of drawers for 1 watt and another for 2 watt. Has worked well for me for 30 years.
When ever I build anything, I always measure all the caps and resistors. Resistors in particular as the small ones I cannot even see let alone read the colours. At least you know that should things not work quite as they should, you know it's not those components.
i store my small resistors divided by last stripe of colour...for example resistors that have green on the last stripe go to a big drawer, that includes one meg, 1.5 megs, 2 megs etc... resistors that have last stripe yellow go to a different drawer, 100k 330k 220k etc...and i have big drawers so i can spread them and choose the ones i need. works fine for me. for big power resistors, wirewound ceramics and similar, i have them divided by 3 categories :from 100 to 500 ohms wich is the most common for mains dropping resistors , they go on one drawer, next drawer is 0 to 100 ohms, and the other one is 500+ and upwards. those are the least used ones on my vintage projects.
The blue ones, I pretty much find impossible to read. They are delightful in that their values are usually so precise, but that's it. I will say, I'm over 60 years old and my eyes definitely ain't what they used to be, but on the older Allen-Bradley resistors, with the sharp, defined corners, I rarely had to even think about the 10% values (been doing this since I was a teenager) because the standard RETMA (or is it just RMA now?) values have been around for so long and I've seen them a billion times. I've even gotten huge bags of the A-B 1/4 watt size where the values were so weird I had to examine them and measure them, one by one. My point is that it's worth 2 cents to MEASURE a resistor, and then (if they are custom values) you have to go through the decision process of whether to place a 947 ohm into the 910 ohm drawer or the 1K ohm drawer. Of course it does no good just to MEASURE a resistor because if you couldn't read it when you first saw it you won't be able to read it when you go to use it, so you have to create some kind of bag with that value. My point being, and YMMV, yes, in a giant thrown-together assortment you can get your resistors for a penny apiece but if you can't read them, you have to measure them, and you'll never use 13/16ths of them. So they're not a penny apiece. I don't think those mass assortments are a good deal. Or maybe I should say, they are an incredible deal but they are a goofy way of buying resistors you need. I see nothing wrong with buying SOME assortments of 20 of each value where the indiv parts are on a tape. I'm talking (negatively) about the 5,000 resistors in a jumbled box.
Those blue resistors did come on tape with each value in a small separate bag. I took them off the tape and put them into storage drawers. The cabinet fell over and they all got jumbled together..
I remember how those in our engineering lab department 'disliked with a passion', seeing a certain design engineer during any prototype phase. We had "Goodwin Cabinets", and because of 'full and complete traceability', an FAA/EASA and FCC requirement, each component was bagged, numbered, and fully traceable. That 'dude' would walk in, rifle his way through a dozen drawers, pick up components, look at them, then take one bagged component, and dump the others into the wrong locations. I became so bad, that the lab manager pulled his key, and put everyone else on notice, 'that he'd fire, or kill anyone who allowed him to use their key for access'. Truthfully, I'm fairly certain that "Bob" (another Bob) would have found it more efficient to bump-off the violator. Seeing that many resistors in one location, sent p*ss-shivers down my spine!
if they were the old style colours it wouldn't be such a problem for me but those other types I would probably sort them into matching piles and meter them !
I have been looking for reasonably priced metal parts cabinets. I had over 20 of the plastic ones that fire melted into big lumps of plastic and parts. There was over $10,000 in parts that were lost because of this. Not actual flames, but heat from the fire. Also be aware that when the plastic melts it gives of poison fumes. Right now I am limited to new plastic ones, but like I said I am looking for metal bins.
You said the blue ones were no-name's and that is certainly possible. But I always order resistors of the same color of mouser or such and they are vishay branded metal film 1%. I also have some of the brown 2 watters. Just different series. Personally I prefer the smaller blue 1 watt types (where appropriate), They give more room in otherwise cramped chassis, better noise figure (no that relevant) and the make it very easy to identify a replacement, which I prefer unless its a true showpiece. They are also reliable. That said I measure every resistor before I use it. Never had a wrong color code, but misreading one, well that happens. I also do the order extras thing, It's very usefull especially on the oddball values. Makes sure you always have one :) I refuse to use carbon comp, might be original, might have niche use cases. But they are not stable in the long run and are the noisiest of all types.
Mine are done by all 1 ohm to 10k in one draw followed by next draw 100k and up. Then 1.2 ohm same way. The bigger wattage ones are in separate tins done the same way.
I ordered a complete assortment of resistors from Amazon once and they were color banded wrong. The value was correct on an ohm meter according to the label on each bag. But the colors were way off. I noticed it as I was putting them in my resistor cabinet by the bag markings and happened to notice the colors weren't right.
Are those the plastic trays? if so How do you get labels to stick to the drawers ? mine just fall off after a week or to... I would imagine the oil in the plastics is to blame...I ended up super gluing the labels to the drawers...
Yes, they are plastic and I have had the same trouble with failing labels in the past. These were attached with clear plastic tape. If they start falling off, I'll try something else.
Don't knock the carbon comp resistors too much. If you get late 1960s or 1970s production Allen Bradleys, you may be surprised by how consistent and up to spec they are. I get them all the time, and rarely get a batch that I have to reject. Sure, the noise figure is higher, but the look can not be beat, and at this point, they have probably age-drifted as much as they are going to drift. Plenty of surplus outlets sell them. Mind you, I can not say the same about other classic brands (CTS, IRC).
Don’t look like you really needed all those resistors. I would generally buy a 10 pc pack of standardized values and wait to see what was more in demand after several months. And, I generally buy all resistors in 1 watt sizes and very few in the 2watt size. Other sizes on demand when required 5w, 10w, 25w. It looks like you bought the entire company.
I buy in quantities of 10 or 25 to get volume discounts. I also work on a wide variety of technologies. Everything from 1920s radios, to modern solid state amps. You get into TVs you need a wider range too like the electrostatic sets use values over 1 M in the deflection circuits. Even up to 22M in the Motorolas.
They should paint one band twice as wide as the others, probably either the multiplier band or the starting number if the resistor value, so that we can tell which end is which...
Thanks again for your videos, when I first started (11 years old) I used egg cartons to store the parts that cut out of TV chassis I took from our TV repair shop's trash.... Oh The Good Old Days! Carl
I feel your pain lol. I have about 20 of those organizers full. You remember those cardboard boxes that set on the shelves at the parts house? With the small vanilla envelopes? I have dozens of those plus piles of boxes full of mixed parts. Most of the time when I order stuff a week later I find a hundred of the same part. Thanks for sharing Bob
I couldnt resist this video.
All likes so far: this video is irresistible.
As an alternative to the metal cabinet with clear drawers shown here, "Keter" makes a toolbox-style parts box with 24 reddish-brown, *removable*, cup-like individual plastic parts bins (with rounded bottoms too), and a BIG handle for easy carrying. About $18 at Walmart. I use these for organizing screws and nails and hardware for various carpentry and home-improvement projects, but they'd work well for storing caps and resistors in an organized fashion. Only drawback is that they're somewhat heavy. Designed in such a way that even if you accidentally forget to latch the box shut, you can pick it up and carry it without spilling/dumping the contents on the ground. All tool and tackle boxes should be "fail-safed" in this manner; I had a boatside/dockside incident with a large Plano fishing tackle box when I was a kid that still makes me agitated to think about it.....
Thanks for that Bob.. Being organised with components seems a very sensible, logical and time saving proposition. The issue for me is lack of space to accommodate enough storage facilities, but hey, it's just another problem looking for a solution as they say in all the best corporations 🤣...
I am impressed. So far I thought i was the only one who got stuff from Newark Electronics. I like test tubes to store resistors in.........if I can get them cheap.
Yes indeed. Newark has some great deals that I couldn't pass up. I also order from Allied Electronics, DigiKey and Mouser.
Love the outtro! 😎
When I started out I kept my resistors in parts drawers and had them sorted by the First color band. Later on I sorted them by value and before I knew it I had too many and started poking around on parts storage. I ended up using Coin Envelopes and a huge Trading Card Box. I have them sorted by value, wattage and type. I also ended up sorting everything like that and only use the Parts drawers for the most common use stuff and parts that are too big or awkward to fit such as ICs. The handy thing with the Envelopes is I written down the mini Datasheets on them for Transistors, Diodes and such. What I would love to find at a fair price is one of those Library index card cabinets (Apothecary Drawers). Been debating to buy a cheap Table Saw and and build one.
Aahhh, organizing parts. Always an issue. For what it's worth I have found it most convenient to organize first tier by power rating, then by value under that. Same for caps, voltage groups first, then by capacitance. Good luck with your task! Like your channel!
I have organizer cabinets, but I'm still pretty much working out of paper bags...not an easy task to find particular value components. One day I hope to try and organize my parts. You now have to really get organized because Shadow is now your producer :)
Ah yes, Organization, the thing we ALL need to do, but the thing most of us put off as long as possible.
I have 2 resistor cabinets, one for all the standard 5 and 10% resistors, and another cabinet of 1% 25 PPM drift coefficient capacitors for broadcast VTR servo systems.
For capacitors, I have one for film and Mica, another for electrolytic and wet tantalum.
Ace hardware has a few organizers that are nice, but Harbor Freight has a lot more options, and if you chose carefully there are ones that are of good quality.
I generally sort mine by the third color band so rather then a range of values in each drawer I have a range of decades. Seven drawers will cover black to blue then it is usually pretty quick to grab what I need from any drawer, I just need to look for the first two colors. I have a row of drawers for 1 watt and another for 2 watt. Has worked well for me for 30 years.
Same here.
@@w8nwo same here just commented above
When ever I build anything, I always measure all the caps and resistors. Resistors in particular as the small ones I cannot even see let alone read the colours. At least you know that should things not work quite as they should, you know it's not those components.
i store my small resistors divided by last stripe of colour...for example resistors that have green on the last stripe go to a big drawer, that includes one meg, 1.5 megs, 2 megs etc... resistors that have last stripe yellow go to a different drawer, 100k 330k 220k etc...and i have big drawers so i can spread them and choose the ones i need. works fine for me. for big power resistors, wirewound ceramics and similar, i have them divided by 3 categories :from 100 to 500 ohms wich is the most common for mains dropping resistors , they go on one drawer, next drawer is 0 to 100 ohms, and the other one is 500+ and upwards. those are the least used ones on my vintage projects.
The blue ones, I pretty much find impossible to read. They are delightful in that their values are usually so precise, but that's it. I will say, I'm over 60 years old and my eyes definitely ain't what they used to be, but on the older Allen-Bradley resistors, with the sharp, defined corners, I rarely had to even think about the 10% values (been doing this since I was a teenager) because the standard RETMA (or is it just RMA now?) values have been around for so long and I've seen them a billion times. I've even gotten huge bags of the A-B 1/4 watt size where the values were so weird I had to examine them and measure them, one by one. My point is that it's worth 2 cents to MEASURE a resistor, and then (if they are custom values) you have to go through the decision process of whether to place a 947 ohm into the 910 ohm drawer or the 1K ohm drawer. Of course it does no good just to MEASURE a resistor because if you couldn't read it when you first saw it you won't be able to read it when you go to use it, so you have to create some kind of bag with that value. My point being, and YMMV, yes, in a giant thrown-together assortment you can get your resistors for a penny apiece but if you can't read them, you have to measure them, and you'll never use 13/16ths of them. So they're not a penny apiece. I don't think those mass assortments are a good deal. Or maybe I should say, they are an incredible deal but they are a goofy way of buying resistors you need. I see nothing wrong with buying SOME assortments of 20 of each value where the indiv parts are on a tape. I'm talking (negatively) about the 5,000 resistors in a jumbled box.
Those blue resistors did come on tape with each value in a small separate bag. I took them off the tape and put them into storage drawers. The cabinet fell over and they all got jumbled together..
I remember how those in our engineering lab department 'disliked with a passion', seeing a certain design engineer during any prototype phase. We had "Goodwin Cabinets", and because of 'full and complete traceability', an FAA/EASA and FCC requirement, each component was bagged, numbered, and fully traceable. That 'dude' would walk in, rifle his way through a dozen drawers, pick up components, look at them, then take one bagged component, and dump the others into the wrong locations. I became so bad, that the lab manager pulled his key, and put everyone else on notice, 'that he'd fire, or kill anyone who allowed him to use their key for access'. Truthfully, I'm fairly certain that "Bob" (another Bob) would have found it more efficient to bump-off the violator.
Seeing that many resistors in one location, sent p*ss-shivers down my spine!
That box full of resistors looks like a nightmare to sort out.
I'm slowly getting there ;)
if they were the old style colours it wouldn't be such a problem for me but those other types I would probably sort them into matching piles and meter them !
I have been looking for reasonably priced metal parts cabinets. I had over 20 of the plastic ones that fire melted into big lumps of plastic and parts. There was over $10,000 in parts that were lost because of this. Not actual flames, but heat from the fire. Also be aware that when the plastic melts it gives of poison fumes. Right now I am limited to new plastic ones, but like I said I am looking for metal bins.
You said the blue ones were no-name's and that is certainly possible. But I always order resistors of the same color of mouser or such and they are vishay branded metal film 1%. I also have some of the brown 2 watters. Just different series. Personally I prefer the smaller blue 1 watt types (where appropriate), They give more room in otherwise cramped chassis, better noise figure (no that relevant) and the make it very easy to identify a replacement, which I prefer unless its a true showpiece. They are also reliable. That said I measure every resistor before I use it. Never had a wrong color code, but misreading one, well that happens.
I also do the order extras thing, It's very usefull especially on the oddball values. Makes sure you always have one :)
I refuse to use carbon comp, might be original, might have niche use cases. But they are not stable in the long run and are the noisiest of all types.
Yes, name brand 1% resistors are also blue. I like your point about being able to identify replacements easily.
I have all sort of component mixed up in a box, i really need to do something about that but i am too lazy
Mine are done by all 1 ohm to 10k in one draw followed by next draw 100k and up. Then 1.2 ohm same way. The bigger wattage ones are in separate tins done the same way.
I ordered a complete assortment of resistors from Amazon once and they were color banded wrong. The value was correct on an ohm meter according to the label on each bag. But the colors were way off. I noticed it as I was putting them in my resistor cabinet by the bag markings and happened to notice the colors weren't right.
Are those the plastic trays? if so How do you get labels to stick to the drawers ? mine just fall off after a week or to... I would imagine the oil in the plastics is to blame...I ended up super gluing the labels to the drawers...
Yes, they are plastic and I have had the same trouble with failing labels in the past. These were attached with clear plastic tape. If they start falling off, I'll try something else.
Mine are all in one big ball
Don't knock the carbon comp resistors too much. If you get late 1960s or 1970s production Allen Bradleys, you may be surprised by how consistent and up to spec they are. I get them all the time, and rarely get a batch that I have to reject. Sure, the noise figure is higher, but the look can not be beat, and at this point, they have probably age-drifted as much as they are going to drift. Plenty of surplus outlets sell them.
Mind you, I can not say the same about other classic brands (CTS, IRC).
I take your point. Allen Bradley made some fine products and there are certainly millions of carbon comps working fine after decades
BTW - Vishay VR68 series go over 1M and are designed for high voltage...
Yes, indeed. I also have a bunch of the VR37 series :)
I think you're gonna need more drawers :)-
I have gotten the Chinese "blue" resistors with an incorrect colour code on the bands. It happens.
Cheers,
Don’t look like you really needed all those resistors. I would generally buy a 10 pc pack of standardized values and wait to see what was more in demand after several months. And, I generally buy all resistors in 1 watt sizes and very few in the 2watt size. Other sizes on demand when required 5w, 10w, 25w. It looks like you bought the entire company.
I buy in quantities of 10 or 25 to get volume discounts. I also work on a wide variety of technologies. Everything from 1920s radios, to modern solid state amps. You get into TVs you need a wider range too like the electrostatic sets use values over 1 M in the deflection circuits. Even up to 22M in the Motorolas.
It's too bad they never used a symbol to indicate the first band on resistors and capacitors.
They should paint one band twice as wide as the others, probably either the multiplier band or the starting number if the resistor value, so that we can tell which end is which...
.