How to keep track of your parts?

I've got, plastic multicompartment bins, small boxes, big boxes, spare parts organized by type or by the project they were used in also in boxes, metal multicompartment boxes holding parts for systems I've designed and sometimes have assembly houses build for me, drawers full, boxes full of sweepings, at least ten boxes with different connectors organized by type, two huge boxes with smaller boxes in side holding hardware, and always an assortment of parts that have migrated to the corners of my work bench. What a damn mess, sometime when I have 6 months off I'm going to organize them, but wait if I actually had

6 months off I'd be living under a bridge. The funny thing is for a new project I'll just order what I need from Digi Key rather than even looking through my junk, lol.

Rocky

Resistors and most-used caps in drawer units (little ones, 3 values to a drawer). Most used ICs etc. in drawer units. You can see the drawer units, so you can't forget where they are. Everything else bought for the occasion, it's not worth the time and effort of remembering where they are. Clear out periodically and give the sweepings to the school electronics club.

Think of the time you'll spend setting up and maintaining the database. How many resistors did I get out for that quick and dirty try-out? And a database that's out of date is, m'Lud, a Snare and a Delusion.

Paul Burke

What a list of replies. The guy wants a databas for his parts. Here it is (29US$) It cost a fraction of the components laying around and it tells you the quantity, where they are, where they came from, the price, brand and so on.... Look here:

Cheers, Marco

Yep. But I still maintain a healthy parts bin for "G-jobs" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

For my hobby parts inventory, I use a 4x6 card for each generic part, listing a line for each full number, quantity, and location. That way you can design with what's in your parts boxes, with the substitutes already listed.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident

If you use PHP and the perl DBI module, there is a database 'plugin' for comma seperated files (look for DBD-CSV on CPAN). Instead of running the full MySQL, it just makes a comma seperated file lokk like a database, with selects and other stuff.

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This is a head question rather than an organisational question - any number of ways work, its finding the will/ability to do it thats hard. If you work for someone, then the storeman does it, you just tell him what you want. If you work for yourself, your stuffed. I throw everything into a plastic crate on the bench as it comes in - use what I want for the job at hand, then forget them. Every few/12 months it gets so chaotic I do a sort of sort and put them in boxes (if I can find the box). (Still cant find my 9" angle grinder....) Things that defy classification get thrown in big plastic boxes labelled RF, Audio, semis, junk, tubes, to be stripped someday, might be useful, dont know what this is/cant remember etc. Same for gear that has died

- lives in piles on the floor - if I store it away, then will be forgotten for ever. But thats OK - the kids can organise a big skip to the tip when I die. Back of the van is a good place to store stuff as well - when van space needed, transfer to side of garage, when wife complains, stall, make excuses, then finally sort out and strip/throw in bin.

Given up looking for resistors, have drawers labelled in values, but spend too much time looking. Never have value/wattage needed anyway. Go up the street and spend $1 to buy new ones. Lot quicker.

Garden shed is useful too - store spare parts for WW2 bomber radios there. (plus audio stuff that needs "just a bit more work/parts" , old VCR's for parts etc) When cant get in or cant get lawn mower out, then sort out and throw excess in garbage bin.

Not much hope, is there - if you were an organised, methodical person (I am told they do exist, somewhere) then you wouldnt be asking the question. Good luck...

73 de VK3BFA Andrew

Hi John,

That only works for SMT. I remember a friend who used envelopes for DIP packages as well. One day he fumbled through them, let off a terrible yell, pulled his hand out and had a pin wedged under a fingernail, effectively tacking the envelope to the finger.

Regards, Joerg

Hi Jim,

I thought all your parts were on a hard disk and scalable ;-)

Regards, Joerg

I have just organised my entire parts collection. I went to a couple of photo stores and got some empty film cannisters, which were free (and are antistatic). I also bought 4 rolls of 200 permanent adhesive labels, and hand-wrote a description (eg 4k99 1% 0603) , then arranged them in some semblance of order. I also bought 200 rectangular plastic jars ($0.50) for the bigger stuff.

Every different part now has a place (I have about 12 different 100n caps). Having everything in order means I dont spend much time looking for things, which used to consume an inordinate amount of time - time I can now waste online :)

And of course if it aint there, I aint got it. Rolodex? Nah. Take the lid off when its empty, you can then see at a glance if you have any.

Cheers Terry

ROTFLMAO!

Perhaps a neural net...

Cheers Terry

Snap. I remember what I have too, but poor organisation in the past has meant hours wasted looking for where it is (hundreds of little bags dumped in box files). Life is a breeze now I finally took the time to put things into logical, rather than diabolical, order.

Cheers Terry

Thanks, Marco! This is as close to what I thought of as it can be. I'll definitely take a closer look at this software. Thanks again.

-- Dmitri Abaimov, RCDD

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I'm quickly approaching the state of (dis) order that you've just described ;-) This is actually what compelled me to reach out to see if someone's got a solution. BTW, Digi-key may get a bit too expensive, so I ended up using eBay most of the time. The problem with eBay though - you rarely get to buy a single part, and rather a lot, which tends to be even more expensive that Digi-Key unless you have to use the same parts in a different project. That, in turn, makes the problem of properly inventorying the parts even more important. So, I set out to find a way that works for a hobbyists. Will post here what I dig out. Thanks for all posted here!

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Rich Webb is, and always will be:

I think this can be done, not as a webpage, using MS Access. Then you can have the queries, reports...

IIRC, MS Access 2000 has an ActiveX component that allows to access database from webpage.

I can't try here because my MS-Office install is broken and I have only a MS Office 97 license, anyway.

[]s

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Joerg, I'm just a small developer and cannot have too many parts. So the list FETs is less than a page, the list of OpAmps is a bit longer and therfore split into manufacturers and sorted alphabetically each. However to each part, the specifications are listed.

The html-file is handeditable with notepad.

Rene

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and

of

(which

Has the advantage that it doesn't crash too, is easy to 'tweak' etc. And the sorting rules are flexible. Can be mixed with other techniques, plastic bags v.s. paper bags, tubes, reels, etc. Sort of the half-organized inconsequent mess that I have now ;)

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Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'x' and 'invalid' when replying by email)

I programmed a VB application some years back to allow for searching for a part. Output is a number and that number is found on the drawer og box

Advantage back then of this system was that I added number of parts in each drawer and when I have done a project in my layout program (Protel), I just export the BOM and the application automagically decreases the part counts in the relevant positions accordingly

Well, it took 5 days to program, so perhaps today I actually have gained time using it :-)

Cheers

Klaus