Nice Joke...

Ha! Makes me feel better about making my own circuit boards.. :)

D from BC

We have a vendor here in Australia (Wagner Electronics Services) where we ordered a bunch of resistors of the wrong/missing value when trying to replenish our repair stocks. About half the order was screwed up.

At first I though it was an order screw-up, some of our resistor order was missing, and they had supplied extras of values we hadn't ordered- though it was a substantial part of the order so I didn't immediately think it was plain human error.

Our secretary/receptionist/logistics/everything else girl tried to return them and get the right bits, was left bewildered when she was told "that was standard practice". She tried to explain it to me, but that just resulted in me being bewildered, so passed the phone onto me.

Yep, if the resistor you order is not in stock, or not a normal stock item, they supply the nearest value they have in stock instead. This is not like getting the wrong colour garden hose from a gardening supply house, the colours on the resistors do actually make a difference. Duh.

Why are surface mount resistors marked, but caps aren't?

John

At least on some of the cap data sheets I read, marking is an option. I vaugely recall seeing the opposite option for resistors but don't hold me to that. I'm curious myself as to why unmarked caps became the convention.

Robert

Last week the occasional reported signal conditioner PCB being 'out of spec' was traced to production unknowingly fitting a 'normal' 1.5n oscillator cap' instead of the (pricey) NPO I'd originally specified. I'm told it was a pain to track down with the damned things not being marked. The usual hot air gun finally solved it. I reckon the makers simple can't fit on (or code) all the vital info i.e. Value-WV-Tempco, so they just leave it off.

A body color code (dielectric type) plus 3 digit value would get us a heck of a lot of the way along.

I suspect their big customers don't really care much one way or the other so long as the reel is marked properly.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Sorry, but this must be a joke :-)

Absolutely. We've had screwups before, I mean it happens, we're only human.

But to substitute different values as a _standard_ practice, and admit to such over the phone, now *that's* a joke.

They have to paint the SMT resistors to protect the resistive layer anyway. So the marking comes as the free addition. It is not necessary to paint the ceramic caps, so they are probably saving some cost.

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Consultant

OT, but.. After stepping around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H & J Leather & Firearms intent on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a uniformed officer was standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up, and fired a few wild shots from a target pistol. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, and several customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from seven different weapons. No one else was hurt.

martin

So you can tell them apart from the resistors ;-)

In the "Don't know whether to laugh or cry" department.

On tht admission of that purposeful mess, just make a strong implication that a lawsuit against them would be a slam dunk winner...