Parts Bin

But parts are tiny nowadays. How do you grab an SC79 or an 0402 part from a bin? My coin envelopes are ideal for shaking out, or scooping up, really tiny parts, on tape or just loose.

John

Nah - heck, I don't even think the store is there any more.

At our age, who could inflate one of those things all the way anyway? ;-D

Cheers! Rich

It's OK - I was in AA at the time, so God has forgiven me.

Thanks! Rich

All the stores around here have a pair of Vidmar cabinets, that hold all the parts that used to be hung on their sliding pegboard racks.

I missed them when a store closed recently. They sold everything except the carpet behind the counter before they closed. ;-)

That's just the active components. I have similar drawers for resistors and capacitors, with values labeled on the face. ...Jim Thompson

Some are. If I have a SMT board to stuff, I usually shove the cut tapes in a plastic shoebox with the spare boards, a copy of the schematic and layout, But a whole lot of what I build myself is one-offs to check the behaviour of bits of circuitry that are critical, unusual, or (increasingly often) just poorly specified in the data sheets. Those ones are usually dead-bug, mostly DIP/TO-92 stuff, and almost all leaded resistors and capacitors.

Some of my parts are old enough that they're getting a bit hard to solder, but I switched to RA flux PbSn eutectic and all became as in the Ukraininan rowboat. (*)

You can get good repeatable results up to about 1 GHz with dead bug, if you dress the leads properly and use semirigid coax for runs longer than an inch or so.

Today I'm putting together an ATMega-based temperature controller for a Fabry-Perot etalon in a laser locker, which a client of mine needs ASAP for his customer demo. If it were just for me, I'd do it dead bug, but one does have to keep up appearances....

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The one down the way from me still uses the sliding pegboards. That might be why they're still in business! (Not.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I like live-bug. You can see the IC part numbers, and don't have to do that confusing reverse-counting thing.

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/BB_fast.JPG

I worked for one guy who sometimes did shipboard custom controls on those awful white plastic breadboard things, put them in boxes, and sold them.

John

You mean you don't have a compressed air outlet in the bedroom? What with all the air-powered tools these days, I figured I'd better be prepared for the inevitable.

Why? It's like all skills... use it or lose it ;-) ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed

Their excuse around here was it freed up space, and a couple idiots had managed to jerk one of the sliding panels out of the track, and onto themselves.

It didn't appear to do Charlie Sheen any good. It's not just using it. It takes exercise, proper diet, and the occasional coaching by a pro.

Good sex is like a triathlon. The middle leg is the hardest.

You didn't work there long, I hope! Shipping stuff on Vectorboard is about as sleazy as I'm comfortable with. Of course it isn't as reliable or as robust as dead bug, so I ship it box-in-a-box.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

How do you see the part numbers on 0402s? ;-)

I've started doing that too, but I'm not as neat as you are.

After almost 40 years of avoiding those things, I actually used one last week; two .2W resistors and four wires. After about ten minutes I pulled the resistors out, cut a couple of lands, and soldered them to the board the thing was hooked to. ;-)

With my Mantis!

But I can't understand why resistors are marked, but caps aren't. But for fast stuff, the resistors work better upside down anyhow.

Trick: hack the copper with an x-acto, then rub it hard with a Scotchbrite pad. That shines the copper and buffs off any burrs.

Well, I have my principles. No plastic breadboard things, no 555 timers, no limes in my beer.

John

We have those too (the full-scale version), but there ain't no part numbers on any 0402s I've seen.

??

That's what I do. ...then another round of X-acto after Scotchbrite (burrs roll back over). I have a lot of overshoot with the blade and sometimes it doesn't track the first slot. Still works.

I needed some quick current limiting driving "422" out of a CPLD. The development kit I'm (not) using has an assortment of plug-in thingies, one of which is one of those plastic things (another a DE-9F connector). It worked, but I ended up hacking up the DE-9F thingy instead.

=A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

=A0 =A0| =A0 =A0mens =A0 =A0 |

=A0 | =A0 =A0 et =A0 =A0 =A0|

=A0|

=A0 =A0 =A0 |

I tried to sell this collection on ebay, but nobody wanted it for $20.

Nine vintage transistors for sale. Five germanium, two silicon, one point contact 2N110, and one old uni-junction (2N491). Most were tested using a DMM to measure hFE, listed below with web references for other data. The 2N110 was tested in a basic amplifier configuration and yields a 5 volt output change for a 1.5 volt input change, or a gain of about 3. Seems to be a working PNP transistor with low gain.

-Bill

John Larkin expounded in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com: ..

Never mind fresh never used parts- how do you deal with those tiny 1/8 watt resistors pulled out of breadboards?

I sometimes just toss them because I can't be bothered to get the magnifying glass out or measure them. At other times (when I feel guilty), I'll toss them all into an unsorted bin for later. But they too might eventually get tossed.

Maybe when my granddaughter gets old enough, I can find a little sorting job for her to do. With those sharp little eyes!

Warren