Filing them away in little drawers or whatever is a *big* waste of time. When the project is completed I just throw the leftovers into a box with the prototype and file the whole mess unless they look *very* likely to be used again.
Maybe being retired he doesn't think his time is valuable, but seems to me that it's a supply and demand thing, the value should go up.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
It depends on how you organize your "JUNK". I sorted everything out in 1970, using 50 drawer parts cabinets. I have added more parts over the years, and more cabinets, but the system has worked VERY well. I don't use self adhesive labels on the drawers. I print up a liner that you can read through the drawer. I'll post a sample in ABSE.
I can find most small parts in a couple minutes with most of that time being spent getting to and back from the parts room. The parts are in a room in the garage, and the shop is in the house.
I put my leftover parts in a shoe box. I make use of the original digikey bags and labels for my lazy system. In the event I actually feel like looking for a part, ...I just flip through and read the digikey labels off the bags.
2 sections...passive and activeOften I forget what's in my junk collection so I just order parts anyways...even though I might have it in stock! I pay Digikey to be my stock room. The costs are not significant enough for me to track, catalog, organize or even look at my junk box.
I like to put more time into design work and less time maintaining a mini stock room. D from BC
How long do you think it takes to look at cabinets full of labeled drawers, opposed to searching online for a part? Don't you ever get an idea in the middle of the night and have a working prototype by dawn? I play the odds. Say I need six of a part but the break is at ten, and ten are cheaper than six? Do you order just the six, or all ten? I buy the ten, and put the free parts into a labeled drawer. I had a computer database of my inventory, but the software won't run on a PC. One of these days I'll write a conversion program to export the data in a comma delimited format, and write it to a PC formatted floppy. I would keep a clipboard next to the parts cabinets and make a note of anything used that week, then update the database every Saturday. I printed out the inventory every 90 days and left it in the same clipboard.
When I have a BOM with say 50 parts..That's 50 places to look in a filing system and who knows if it'll be there.. The time adds up.
I'd rather just order everything online. I might check the junk box first if it's a part over $10.00.
On Digikey, I've noticed that I often just purchase what I need. No more.. However, I do get hit with min order quantities and get left overs for the junk box.
I don't construct circuits at night.. I often make schematic improvements up until the parts arrive. I have to order parts for the core design and guessed parts for the design changes.
My junk box is mostly used when:
1) I burned out all my ordered parts 2) I forgot to order something 3) Parts for destructive testingD from BC
My goal is to not spend a penny more than I have to, to finish any project. Parts are sorted by category, then part number. It only takes a few seconds to see if I have each part. Both my military and manufacturing backgrounds scream WASTE! when I see how you do things. I also have some expensive surplus parts like gold plated glass piston trimmer capacitors and teflon insulated microwave piston trimmers.
For me speed is #1! Cost and waste is secondary.... If a part costs $7.00 and saves me 5 hours of design calculations..I'll buy it. and if I change my mind,..it goes into the "black hole" junk box to be forgotten along with the memory chips I bought in 1985..
I've tried long ago..and I've never been able to completely make a pcb with leftover parts..I always had to order something....so I order the entire BOM.
Compared to all the old computers being dumped, I'm making very little waste. D from BC
555's the first production IC??? Like hell. That thing is wildly successful, but is of 1971 vintage well after uA709 and now better known uA741 operational amplifiers of the early 1960's. Any circuit complexity comparison versus the earliest TTL and earlier RTL could have taught you this.
The first page of a google search search string "earliest production IC" produced these:
[PDF] Influence of Ovoli Typology on Globe Artichoke Development, Early ...File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat IC on Artichoke. Ed.: V.V. Bianco et al. Acta Hort. 681, ISHS 2005 ... The earliest production resulted delayed and not concentrated due to the ...
Chapter 2: Asia's Electronics Manufacturing Infrastructure
The earliest beneficiaries of Japan's technology transfer, Korea, Taiwan, ... such as IC wafer production, IC packaging, or precision manufacturing. ...
monolithic integrated circuits
TI's early production, whether marked as SN51x or with custom part ... This company, formed by ex-Fairchild employees, was a leader in early IC manufacture. ... homepages.nildram.co.uk/~wylie/ICs/monolith.htm - 35k - Cached - Similar pages
Milicast Models - Battlefield Range
Sherman IC 17pdr. Firefly (Hybrid) with stowage, BB13, £10.50, £28.50. Sherman II (M4A1 Earliest production type), BB10, £9.95, £26.25 ...
Transistor Museum Store Index Historic Devices Books Germanium RTL ...
The earliest transistors used a technology known as Point Contact ? this was ... the 1N34 germanium diode has been in production ever since and continues to ... semiconductormuseum.com/ MuseumStore/MuseumStore_Index.htm - 76k - Cached - Similar pages
Integrated circuit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A monolithic integrated circuit (also known as IC, microcircuit, microchip, ... The earliest integrated circuits were packaged in ceramic flat packs, ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit - 94k - Cached - Similar pages
The Chip Collection - TI Integrated Circuit Object Listing ...
Integrated Circuit - Devices are from the first production run of IC's in the TI San ... Integrated Circuit - These IC's are early production samples of the ... smithsonianchips.si.edu/texas/ic.htm - 191k - Cached - Similar pages
[PDF] Enhancement of Production Efficiency in the IC Packaging Industry ...File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML data in IC packaging industry, the production. model incorporates a WIP module to monitor ... machine for the lot that has the earliest start time; ...
The most valuable thing i have ever bought is a device programmer (and a UV "EPROM" eraser). It made possible lots of project that were otherwise impossible. Discrete logic is fine, but i need CPLD's and FPGA's more often now (too much to do, too little board space to do it in).
[snip]
Ooops. Memory failure... I thought I read (or misread) somewhere a long time ago that the 555 was first in production.. Damn lead solder :P I didn't check google..
Maybe it was the first mixed mode IC in production? D from BC
Today a JAM/STAPL player and a download cable is needed. Most CPLDs can be had as ISP parts.
Parts like the 22V10 can be had as reprogramable parts too.
Today, I don't think I would design in a micro that didn't have ISP ability.
ICD is even better, for micro development, but I don't think even ISP functionality is a shoo-in for all production situations.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
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