While populating the BOM for a new design which contains noise-senstive areas I found on Digikey that the TT/Welwyn PCF metal film resistor series has been obsoleted. KOA Speer is still available in metal through others but at higher cost.
Are people not using metal film anymore or why is that?
Joerg wrote in news:fj9pf0F7laeU1 @mid.individual.net:
I think it is a monopoly thing. Look at all the fab houses Vishay bought up, and that is almost all one can get now, and they have a good rep. So the other "dompetitors" wither and die.
It has to be metal and then the selection in standard 0805 size shrivels down to soon-to-be-unobtanium TT/Welwyn brand metal film at 10c or less, and high-precision Vishay metal foil at several bucks a pop. Precision isn't needed.
Mouser and others offer other brands but at significantly higher cost which begins to matter if you need dozens per board.
I also use Susumu by default. I was never ever disappointed.
My most important customer uses Beyschlag and would not switch. But these do not have the values printed on them. That's ok for their automated assembly, but for my development I want to read what it really is without using the DVM.
Thickfilm / Cermet can produce a lot of noise when there is a DC voltage across them. Worse than carbon composition. Thick film is banned here. Only for 100 Meg or so, there it gets difficult.
Yesterday, I did restock all the np0 capacitors from 1p to 470n. That was a lot of work to look them up and find the best. :-)
Not sure about those. I use a lot of Susumu. I was going over someone elses design, and was going ask why they used spendy 0.1% metal films in through hole. But checked the price before opening mouth, and found that they are reasonable now. (Couldn't find them at mouser... these YR1B1K0CC. from TE)
Only problem is, Susumu is usually only available up to 100ohms in metal and I need more.
Beyschlag is a company I always liked while living in Germany. Then they also got swallowed by Vishay. I never used their round SMT resistors though (Mini-MELF?), they rolled around too much.
I found it only matters in circuits where you really have to hear the grass grow, and only the first stage.
I am gradually retiring so I probably won't have to do that again. Instead, I am stocking up on hops :-)
Their search engine really is the pits. Don't they own Mouser? Mouser is where I found the KOA Speer series available but at higher prices than Welwyn used to be.
No, I have the whole spectrum here in 0603. From sub-Ohm to > 1Meg.
0603 is the sweet spot for me, they fit the grid given by SO-8 and are in no way hairy to solder by hand. OK, I can do vapor phase here if it is really necessary. Extreme values may be 0805.
The solder chicks of a customer of mine boasted that they could solder everything. I gave them my Murata 01005 starter kit. They were horrified after I insisted that the bags were NOT empty. :-)
They also have 0603-like stuff. The MELFs are excellent if you have high peak power or need little C to GND.
Milfs can also be excellent. Ouch. :-)
The CEO of my customer once used Beyschlags for a satellite that flew a great mission. Ordinary parts for TV production, not special thingies in individual glass tubes that have been tested close to destruction. He used to argue that they were used in such quantities, that nothing would work that came from an assembly line if they were not perfect. It seems, he was right.
Nevertheless, we payed more than ?100K for the 100n decoupling caps of our last payload. Abt. 2 shoeboxes in size, and lots of metal for cooling. That were no TV set parts.
We have a lot of precision circuits and it does not pay to have the inventory twice for really good and only ordinarily good.
0.5% thin film as a standard is cheap enough. 1/f with thick film is really ugly.
I returned this week from Venice & Salzburg and bought a 6pack of Josephi dark beer in bottles somewhere in Bavaria. I should have bought a lot more. :-(
Gerhard Hoffmann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:
You will not see markings on 0402 and smaller form factor. If you are building larger stuff, they are large enough to put a meter on if you were dumb enough to dispense them haphazardly knowing they were unmarked.
As far as development goes, your proto builder should be keeping track of every component until the circuit is fully characterized
I needed s bunch of 0.5 watt resistors, but found few if any old-fashioned carbon ones at Mouser that were not more expensive than metal film. Huh?
588-OF122JE vs
660-MOS1/2CT52R122J
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If it's carbon composite, it has a few special properties. We buy them because the leads are non-magnetic. I think they can also handle higher pulse power.
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