13 Dec
2007
13 Dec
'07
6:12 a.m.
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.
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 got about as far as the basic parts, and half way
through the electrolytics. 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.
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? 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?
So, I'd be interested to hear what other people have
to say on the subject - and Jay, I hope this is
on-topic enough. I mean, these are all parts used for
repairing and maintaining on-topic hardware, so I
think it counts. All of us that fix this stuff need to
keep track of parts. The next time I need a 1488 to
repair a terminal that won't transmit, I don't want to
spend four hours trying to find it.
-Ian