For power supplies, I use 2 different supplies instead of 1 supply with 2 outputs. At the time, my requirements were for small and portable. Both work great. I prefer the Tenma because of the output on/off button and the significally smaller form factor.
For small part storage, I splurged a bit and went with the Wen Tai boxes. They make it _very_convenient to find parts, grab them with a tweezers, and place them directly on to boards. I have about 9 “trays”/configurations of these that are 9"x7.5"x7/8" each. The bins come in several sizes and have a pretty easy to assemble way of sliding them together in the configuration you are looking for. I have been doing this for about 4 years now without issue. These parts bins are out in my non-heated/non-A/C garage 24x7x365. I do put LEDs in in the same part boxes, but then they are put in an air tight container with a bunch of dessicant so I don’t have an issue when I reflow them. I do choose to remove all of my small parts from the tape/tubes/etc and place them directly in the bins. This saves a ton of space. I started with enough bins to make maybe 2 or 3 trays and built up from there.
If you are asking me, it is generally about the time it takes to inventory all the parts that come in from DigiKey for a project - meaning the time it take to make sure I received the parts I ordered - triple that. So maybe if it took me 10 minutes to inventory, it takes me maybe 30 minutes total to inventory, take the parts out of their tape/tube, put them in their bins, and create the labels. That can vary greatly depending on the types of parts ordered. If all of my resistors ordered are the same physical size and come from the same manufacturer, creating labels for each value is very quick after the first one.
If I have to move the bins around to get the sizes/types/features/capabilities in order again, which I do once or twice a year, that process takes 10-15 minutes per a “tray”. Generally, I just add the new sizes on the bottom row until I re-organize. At this point, I have a decent selection of many jellybean parts, reducing the need to re-organize often.
Not yet! But I only have about 3-4 years in on many of the parts. If you are worried about static, they have black ones listed specifically as anti-static.
I prefer having different colors making it easier to grab the right tray.
Red = Resistor
Cyan = Capacitor
Blue = ICs
Did you, by chance, see any part failures when you were in the basement that you thought might be due to static, humidity, etc?
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No, never did, but always wonder about it. We never were using super sensitive chips though, nor were we doing enough build volume to really suss out problems like that (ie. we were normally dealing with so many other issues)
I am sure if we made 10,000 of something we would have had an issue somewhere. But then, I would wondered if the environmental conditions were the cause or just general entropy/Murphy.
We used to produce a small 24V to 12V converter for Volvo Cars. It was used for car radio backup. Suddenly we had a 30% reject in our final tests. We track the problem to a solder iron that was not grounded. We then used the mosfet transistor BS170. Static from the solder iron killed them
In production you have to solve a problem like that quick. Within an hour i guess. After grounding the solder iron, zero defects. Thats why you always should have 100% final testing. Volvo Cars will not tolerate even 0,1% failure within warranty.
While most (all?) of you seem to have proper test equipment such as DMM, scope, LA, this little gadget can still be quite handy. It has two analog input channels as well as 2 analog output channels that can be either a voltage source (0 - 5V) or a current source (+/- 200ma). Great for testing components, curve traces, matching transistors etc, and only about $50.
And for the record, no I do not have any affiliation with Analog Devices.
Update: There is also the ADALM2000. It’s a little more expensive but a much more capable device. Dual channel 20MHz digital oscilloscope, dual channel 20MHz arbitrary waveform generator, 20MHz spectrum analyzer, function generator, and 16 channel 100MHz logic analyzer and pattern generator and more. It’s new and should become available in the next week or so.
We think it’s a great low cost device for getting started and will be doing more work with these in the future. It’s probably the best “all in one” device for getting started if you don’t have any equipment on your bench.
I like them because each of the little compartments inside can be taken out individually and reorganized. The bins are all different sizes for different size parts which is nice. And then the really cool thing is you can stack them on top of each other, or do like this guy did and route out grooves in a cabinet to slide them into:
I’ve seen these kinds of bins used by the “Robots and Dinosaurs” hackerspace when i visited Australia. They had a great setup:
They stored lots of various part types in there, which this seems optimzed for. If you have a bunch of valves, it’s possible that you can shake them around without anything falling out, even smaller parts.
I was thinking of using them for through hole components. They’re nice because you can take the individual compartments out and rearrange them however you like inside the organizer.
