In my previous article I briefly showed the way I store and organize my SMD components. Even it is way better than storing parts in labeled plastic bags, in which the parts are usually shipped, it is still far away from being perfect. I was already looking for a better solution for a six months or so, when I finally found two products, which seemed like a possible solution – Aidetek Box-All Cases and WenTai Boxes.
Continue reading “The New Way of Storing and Organizing SMD Components”
I use SMD components in my projects whenever it is possible. I like when things are compact, look professional and also I hate drilling PCBs. Also many modern components aren’t available in other packages. However with bright sides of SMD components comes the dark side — the storage.
You need several hundreds type of components to do something meaningful. The components are small, come in similar packages usually with no labeling (capacitors, inductors, SOT, QFN — all of them have no, or at least not fully descriptive label). Putting them in a one large bag isn’t a good idea. Once you loose track what kind of component is it, you can throw it out. Sometimes it can be measured, but usually the time doesn’t worth the money.
I used to keep my components in the original carrier tape, usually with a handwritten label. All the tapes were in several plastic bags. After my collection of components grew up a little bit, this kind of storage was unusable. Lookup a component of a particular type was time consuming, reading small, often blurred hand-written labels, was a pain. Maybe you know it by yourself.