Component Organizers

[Cygnus X1]

What's your best method to organize (store) resistors, caps, pots, wire, tubes,transformers...etc?
I have things stuffed into small drawer organizers, cigar boxes, plastic divider boxes, and all across my benches!

I need to find a compact solution to help 5S this workspace.

Ideas?

[Enzo]

Welcome to the real world. Everyone faces this.

I started out 50 some years ago with one small drawer unit. I kept my resistors in a coupe of the drawers and my small capacitors in another. A larger drawer held my larger caps. Another drawer my few connectors. Hardware. etc. Then I got another drawer unit, then another etc.

Today I keep my small resistors in a 60 drawer unit, and really, now I need more. When I started that drawer unit, my first drawer was "under 10 ohms." Then a drawer for each standard value. But nowdays small value resistors like 4.7 ohm and 3.3 ohm, of course 1 ohm, and even factional ohm are quite common. So I could use more drawers.

I use another 60 drawer unit for power resistors, mainly the 5 and 10 watt ones. I learned my lesson, so 0.1 ohm 0.22 ohm. 0.27ohm, 0.33 ohm, etc etc each have their own drawer. Some higher value drawers like 5k-10k or something exist where there are not many resistors. But if some value is used a lot, even if it falls in thye middle of one of those range drawers, I still give it its own. Say the 400 (or 390)5 watt and 10 watt that peavey uses in most tube amps.

I have many transistors, but there are thousands more I don;t have. But transistors are amazingly flexible in terms of subs, so I arrange my stock with substitution in mind. I have a couple large drawer units for TO92 and similar sizes. Then another for TO220, TO126, and yet another for TO3 and other high power types. Other sizes like TO66 and TO39 are fit in whatever row has space.

Most of my small ecaps and mylars are in another 60 drawer unit. LArger ecaps are mainly in an 18 drawer unit. (same size as 60 drawer, but with larger drawers) But i also keep small cardboard boxes nearby.

BUT, it is all about organization, not what the storage looks like. You can buy 100 small manilla envelopes for not a lot. The ones the size of a playing card or baseball card. Write the value on each flap, and sort your small resistors into them. Then stack them in order in a larger box. A shoe box maybe. Now you can just flip through the envelopes like you were looking for a file folder in a file drawer, until you find your value. IN fact I have a large stash of surplus resistors I store exactly like that. They are large amounts so I use 5x9" envelopes, but the system is the same. I have several sets of old Wurlitzer tines sorted in the small envelopes and so stored the same way.

My main problem now is finding shelf space for all these drawer units.

One thing I treasure is this sort of file cabinet I have. It is about waist high and maybe three feet wide. 36 drawers, each roughly the size of two reams of paper stacked. In this I stock things like jacks and switches, batteries, slider/fader pots, CD laser pickups, speaker components, oh just larger things. And a coup;le drawers for things like "Fender parts." I used to have a client operating discos in several states, all using those nice Biamp DJ mixers. SO I had a drawer for Biamp parts. They don't anymore, and niehter do I so I ought to retire that drawer. Lots of push switches that can go elsewhere.

But any sort of small drawer unit would serve such a purpose

There is no right and wrong, no official way. Just keeping the parts together, safe, and organized is the part that matters. If YOU know where everything is, it matters not if I could walk in there and find anything.

I sort my transistors into package types, then within that they are in numerical order. But each type drawer has the voltage, current, power rating so I can look for a good sub. I took over a sdhop that opreviously did a lot of home stereo work as well as our stuff. We had tons of good transistors that we didnl;t use anymore, but were perfect for substituting. SO I did this arrangement. If I need a TO220, and don;t have what I want, I can look through the other TO220s on hand and see if we have something. ANother fellow who worked out of that shop hated it. He wanted all transistors in numerical order period. When he wanted a sub he preferred to look up potential sub part numnbers, then go look to see if we had them. Point being, neither of us is wrong, it is just how we want to see it organized.

I have a few plastic fuse box holder displays on my wall. Vertical columns with stacks of fuse boxes - the standard little tin box with 5 fuses. SLide the bottom box out for access. I only had so many, they hang on the wall by the door. They hold my 20mm fuses. My 1-1/4" fuses are all in a drawer unti across the aisle. I had that from before I;d ever even seen a 20mm fuse. Well I know where all the fuses are, but I bet if some new tech worked in here, he;d just hate it. Too bad. When I have another tech here on a visit, I just point and say "3 amp slow."

Pots are a pain, you can look at 50k pots or 500k pots, and still every amp maker uses different ones. I quit trying to keep up. I had a large drawer unit with a bunch of drawers for PV and for Fender and for SLM, sorted by part number. But generics? Foo. I have another cardboard drawer unit from some old kit of parts. SO they sit there. 1k, 5k, 10k, etc.

I think really for a starting out point, my envelope trick is probably the most result from the least money and effort.

Transformners? I have a p[ile on a shelf in my warehouse, but really I don't use many transformers.

[Cygnus X1]

Enzo, did anyone mention you are GOD lately?
As I stay in the air conditioned garage on my week off from the steel mill
I have two goals in mind.
Getting some amp projects done (stuck in the mud on one, just dumb), and organizing so I can move around
and know what I need to order next.

Never considered the envelopes.
Good idea.

[Steve Conner]

I do pretty much the same as Enzo but smaller and worse organised. I've picked up a lot of drawer units over the years.

I only have one tip to add: When you are taking a piece of equipment apart, it's wise to keep all the fasteners together. I used to use paper coffee cups, but I often have to take several things apart at once, which results in a pyramid of coffee cups full of screws and washers from goodness knows what.

Now I keep a small drawer unit empty, and when I need to "file" some parts I take a drawer out and use that.

And, I have a binder that was originally meant to hold 35mm slides, but now it is stuffed full of all the resistor values from 1 ohm to 10 megs.

I've always hated the feeling of starting work in a new workshop, and not knowing where to find a damn thing.

[Enzo]

Oh taking things apart is an art in itself alright.

I used to go to the local film processors and get all the free little 35mm film cans I could carry. Perfect for storing screws from something. And I can just chuck the can into the amp to keep them with it. Now camera film is all but gone. Fortunately my health is bad enough I have tons of empty pill vials for the purpose.

I also save those plastic tubes like spreadable cream cheese comes in. Also soft margarine, some cheeze spreads, whatever. They stack nicely, and if you save the lids, they even close. Good for knobs off some amp.

When I take something apart, one method is this. Sit an empty tub down,pull the lid screws off the amp, into the tub, now stack another tub on top. Into that go the screws that hold the circuit board in place, stack another tub. Into that might go screws from the heat sink or other transistor mount hardware. So instead of one big pile of misc screws, I have them in stages, makes reassembly a lot clearer. I can do the same with pill vials. One for lid screws, one for board screws, etc etc. But I don't leave hardware lying around, it is always contained and stays with the unit. If something is to stay apart, I might transfer to plastic bags, especially if they are from a one-space rack thing that a pill vial would bump the lid into the air. Baggies are flat.

[Mark Hammer]

Hobby/craft stores, and "dollar stores", are great for finding storage solutions for smaller components.

Semiconductors are a particular problem. One can always organize a matrix of parts drawers for passive components that have standard values and an orderly sequence to them; e.g., caps between this value and that one. Semiconductors, on the other hand, have no particular order and one tends to accumulate them over time, such that it may initially make sense to assign a drawer to "op-amps" but then you have to distinguish between single, double and quad types, and then between performance types within each of those categories, and so on. I have a drawer for OTAs and other "dynamics control" chips, but I probably need to distinguish between single and dual OTAs, and between OTAs and other chip types (compander, dolby, dbx, electronic pot).

So, for that, sometimes the little plastic boxes that people use for sorting pills, or needlepoint thread, or even fishing lures, can come in handy. For example, one cheap plastic box can hold and sort all the FET and MosFet devices, and another for all bipolar devices, and so on. The boxes are stackable, and allow you to have the equivalent of 40 drawers or more in the space of a shoebox.

[Cygnus X1]

Great ideas, I appreciate it.
Actually I have found tons of room just by cleaning up.
50 VHS tapes?
WTH???
Gone...and there is a large cupboard to use.
Piling transformers in there.

Also moving things to convenient locations helps.

[efyindia]

Nice said by Steve Conner.. i also did that as Steve,,,

[woodyc]

I use plastic bins, but I stick them on the wall. Here's a pic of my main guitar amp bench.



As you can see, this morning I'm working on one of those new amps that looks like a bicycle wheel.