13 Dec
2007
13 Dec
'07
11:41 a.m.
On Thursday 13 December 2007 09:12, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
Well, I've made lots of progress on the eternal
task of cleaning, sorting
and organizing. I can now see my entire workbench! I found half a dozen #2
Phillips screwdrivers I hadn't seen in a while, and while vacuuming, I
probably picked up a couple pounds of screws, wire insulation bits and
solder drops.
I use that #2 Philips too much to let it get lost. :-)
So, now I think I need to actually, finally organize
my parts. You see, I
started to do this a long time ago, and I have a lot of those little plastic
drawers.
I have some of those that I was given a while back too, and tend not to
use 'em all that much. The biggest problem with those is inserting stuff
into the middle, if you add parts later on...
I got about as far as the basic parts, and half way
through the
electrolytics.
Electrolytics can cover an awfully large range of sizes, some of what I have
being so small I can barely handle them and others are the size of soup cans.
I don't tend to try and store them all in the same context.
Everything else is semi-sorted into drawers, albiet
with rather vauge
categories "Transistors... Diodes..." or completely unsorted (Salsa jars,
butter tubs, shoe boxes, coffee cans and Altoids tins). So now, I need to
sit down, for a good long day, and sort parts into drawers.
And herein lies my question - how do you manage a large parts collection? I
mean, the phrase "junkbox" generally referrs to a somewhat organized system
of finding parts, not just a copier paper box full of parts. Otherwise,
you'll spend two hours just trying to find that 330 ohm current limiting
resistor you need.
Way back when, in my case, it surely did refer to a large unorganized
container such as you refer to here. And yes, I did spend way too much time
looking for stuff sometimes.
So - how do other electronic hobbyists sort parts? How
far do you organize
them? A drawer for each value of resistor? Drawer for a range of values?
What works well, to minimize the time spend searching for components?
I've used drawers at one point, and still have some hardware in some of them.
I also went for a while with various small boxes. One place sold "white
boxes" that were the size you'd need for vacuum tubes, and buying 1000 of
those at a time came in handy, though finding appropriate ways to store
those was a little difficult. Right now I have a whole bunch of those in a
couple of punch card cabinets. I'm probably going to phase those out,
though.
What I'm doing now is putting parts in small zip lock bags. I got a hold of a
box of 1000 of these 3x5 bags that also had a punched hole in the top of
them, making it convenient to bunch them on large rings (or a bit of wire or
whatever), so quarter watt resistors on one, transistors on another, etc.
I give a part its own bag when I have enough of them. The problem now is
that I need to find a source for some more of those as I don't know where
these came from.
Also, another thing I have been wondering about - how
bad is it to store
IC's in those clear plastic parts drawers? Any problem with static? I've
never noticed any, but then again, so far I've only got a handfull of basic
TTL logic sorted out. The rest are still in tubes and boxes. What about CMOS
chips?
Chips that I have a lot of stay in the tubes I got 'em in, mostly. Some
salvaged CMOS parts live in a can. I have a lot of cans here but they're not
terribly space-efficient.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin