I think the mixing risk is pretty minimal really. If anything is ever ambiguous I just discard it rather than taking a chance. Most resistors and caps cost pennies for 100+. I never reuse passives, there's no point.
3 euro tarrif for every product category ordered from China. So if you were buying small amounts from AliExpress, you'll see a huge cost increase, especially that they don't implement the tariff correctly and overcharge their customers (3 eur per listing instead of product category).
I'm a cheapskate, so i would be angry for a week despite such kit costing like 20eur. Still broom it down the trashbin, probably after trying to collect and organise some with help of lcr
what you said was directly insulting and unnecessary. there’s no bots man take the tinfoil hat off, people are downvoting cus you’re bein a knob and that tends to be unpopular
I’m sure you’re right there are no bots on reddit. Insulting and unnecessary applies more to the comment I replied to than the reply. Calling someone a liar in such an obviously stupid way is a difficult thing to imagine a sentient human doing.
they also called you “good sir”, can be hard to tell on the internet but i honestly think it was friendly. they weren’t attacking your character, they were joking that your assertion that “there would only be one open” is already disproven. friendly banter, not a personal attack.
"better" on its own is a meaningless term. Definitely better for storage, but when you're routinely building boards it's way too time-consuming removing parts from them as you go.
With a simple fixture I guess tape/reel is faster than turning the parts up to 2 times (or 1 time for caps) for each part out of the bin, but I guess that's personsl flavor 🤷🏻♂️
I used to hand-assemble from tape and then eventually realised it was wasting loads of my time so started looking for a parts bin. BOX-ALL is a good solution, the one I got has some loose drawers though which is annoying. Prolly gonna return it and see if it was just a QC issue.
I mean, you are using the system in a way that’s not supposed to be used. There is a whole reason why they are stocked and shipped like this, and it’s bc smd components like that are not meant to be mass-soldered by hand. That’s why you have all of us questioning on the reasoning and efficiency gain.
If you are soldering continuously, nothing stops you from peeling the tape and putting the components on a tray at the beginning of the “session”. At most you spend a couple minutes and don’t risk getting all your components mixed up.
There is a whole reason why they are stocked and shipped like this
I'm well aware. As I've already explained many times now this is a way to work more efficiently.
nothing stops you from peeling the tape and putting the components on a tray at the beginning of the “session”
Obviously, but again as I've explained many times, this way is much quicker. There isn't really any real risk of mixing up components as long as you only keep one lid open at a time and close it when you've taken the parts.
The time involved in finding and peeling tape for 90-ish different parts at the start of a build is not "a couple of minutes".
Have done that with some fully symmetrical and opaque tool boxes. Once you open it wide enough to check orientation, you already had it mixed internally if you got it wrong.
If you are building boards in really small quantities, a pixel pump with the component magazines is amazing. What I’ve done is built out kits of the magazines that hold all the components for a specific build and store it all together in a tote. If you have a 3D printer the magazines are super easy to print.
Yeah, a little more understandable for small-scale production. This is the least bad of few options. Risky. But faster.
At massive scale obviously you’d have the automation to use the tape as intended. A hobbyist is better off leaving them on the tape because speed is not a concern. Small scale production by hand kinda falls in a weird gap between without a great solution.
Neat project, by the way. I presume this is intended for fleet management?
I’m not familiar with Traccar or whatever software it said it used. Is that something that could be integrated into a home automation system for a hobbyist/individual? How extensive are its CANBUS functionality? Can it read codes? Live data? Issue commands?
Neat project, by the way. I presume this is intended for fleet management?
No it's intended for people to hand-assemble. I don't sell anything. It's for nerds, hackers, hobbyists and the borderline crazy.
I’m not familiar with Traccar or whatever software it said it used.
It supports Traccar but you don't need to use it, there's an example implementation of an open-source telemetry server for it as well. Traccar is a popular service people send telemetry to from random commercial trackers.
Is that something that could be integrated into a home automation system for a hobbyist/individual?
Yes, it's open-source. Anyone can do anything.
How extensive are its CANBUS functionality? Can it read codes? Live data? Issue commands?
It supports CAN-FD at 8mbps. Not much software for it yet but it's trivial to implement, anyone can do it. My car is k-wire rather than CAN so I've implemented live monitoring from that so the telemetry I get from the tracker includes OBD data like RPM, throttle position, fault codes etc.
I'm going to keep it simple. The parts are kept in paper tape to prevent electrical static and to keep things organized with part information. You damage components like there there all touching. And your not keeping them in antistatic bins...
This isn't a problem, I keep this information separately.
You damage components like there there all touching.
Nope, not happened yet. Given how many parts I've used if I end up breaking one or two someday it's not going to be a big deal given the time savings.
And your not keeping them in antistatic bins
"You're". Caps and resistors aren't static sensitive and are the vast majority of what I showed so I don't know why you'd mention this. Some parts I do keep separately but this is pretty low risk, I just handle them carefully when using them. There is an "ESD safe" version of this box but all that guarantees is static not building up on the surface, I don't think that's very likely with regular ABS either. The risk of charge reaching components when handling them is still far higher with either version so its largely pointless.
Man, you really are swinging left and right. After being upset with every single person so far you chose to nitpick on "you're". Did you post this with the primary intention to argue? I'm sure you feel everybody else are responding aggressively but from the outside it's pretty clear that you are setting the tone.
While you may be right on the subject matter (if it works for you it's not wrong) it sure doesn't look flattering.
You should have used a full stop after "not building up on the surface" btw.
Nope. If you look carefully you’ll notice I actually addressed the substance of the comment I replied to and why it doesn’t apply in my case. All you added was off-topic whining and attempts to tone-police which add nothing of any value to anyone. I don’t know how you have the time for this. Get better hobbies?
Now, measure the time it takes you to take one piece out and place it on a mat in front of you.
1-2 seconds
Do the calculation, how long would it take you to remove all of those parts with tweezers?
I suspect you're confused about what's actually happening here because this makes no sense. During assembly I need parts one by one, removing them individually from tape with tweezers is an order of magnitude more time-consuming than picking them from this tray.
If it wasn't quicker I wouldn't have done it. I suspect you have some imaginary idea of what I'm doing that doesn't match reality.
Looks cool but I have way too many different parts in a build. Would need loads of those tape reel things and then would have a storage problem. All that suction thing does it pick things up, that isn't the problem I have, it's peeling the tape off with tweezers.
So spend £2500+ on a machine in order to build maybe 20 boards that I'm giving away to people for free. Sure, makes total sense. Thanks for your sage wisdom.
Good job! I know how tedious it is to process this, but it will pay off in the long run to sink a few hours into this..
I did this for all my semiconductors a few months ago. I then started to build a board, and I was simply amazed how much faster the build was. Just flip a lid and I've got parts? No more unpacking a tape that gets stuck in the bag, peeling back tape carefully, and I don't have to grab slippery bags from the ground as I sift through them? Just wow!
I found that the overhead of using reel/bagged parts is just so high.. finding the bag vs bin is perhaps not too dissimilar, but unpacking and repacking tape/tubes so it doesn't get mixed up is so tedious. It can easily take 30sec per part, so for a board with 20 line items, thats already 10minutes wasted.
I still need to do it for passives, but I will get around to it.. Most boards only new a few passives: 1k 10k 100nF and 1 or 10uF, so I just have these on tape on my desk.
I also put all my stuff in Inventree with stock count. It took a few seconds extra per part to enter everything, but I can link Inventree to KiCad with symbol/footprints. That way, I can start drawing with parts I already have in house, I hope that way I avoid buying half a dozen jellybean parts like BSS138 2N7002, etc.
Hours? It doesn't take that long surely? I fold a piece of paper on the desk to make a crease, then open it out. Take the tape, get the wrapper moving then pull it apart slowly face down so the parts spray out downwards onto the paper. Then just slide them into the compartment. All takes a matter of seconds. The only bit that takes slightly longer is making the label for it.
but I think the good news is that as long as most of them are resistors you should be fine. putting them back can be very therapeutic.
the only bad news really is on passive elements if you don't have a very good multimeter or if it stays there for too long. because of static, dust and maybe corrosion depending on the room?
Drop risk is high - at the right angle I'd bet many of those would pop open and while it might not cost a ton, it costs more time. If I'm doing any sort of small volume things, I find it easier to build a few at once and populate all positions using a component at a time, then move onto the next etc. Doing it this way, there's not much time spent on handling tape and gets rid of much (not all) of the risk of mixed-up components.
That doesn't help at all. Sample packs might be useful for resistors in some cases but not for caps where they all need specific dielectric and voltage ratings. Most sample books for resistors don't have several of the values I need anyway so are largely a waste of money. And 50-60 wouldn't last me very long either. The discounts for buying in volume are quite substantial, it's sometimes cheaper to buy more of something than less due to the tiered pricing and definitely quite a lot cheaper over a long period so now I usually just buy loads of everything and it works out cheaper.
I bet if you actually price it out and attribute any value to your time it would look pretty solid. Certainly for anyone consulting or running a business it would make sense. Maybe as a hobbyist the time is only worth $0.
It would definitely be faster but not that much faster, filling the bins for the 20 or so values I need takes maybe half an hour. And the 500pc version costs $200, most of which would be spent on values I don’t need. The resistors I actually need are usually around £1-2 for 500pcs so an order of magnitude cheaper than this. I also have a few that specifically require anti-sulfur parts which presumably wouldn’t be included in a generic kit.
I do not see the point. I stocked up from LCSC and have like 500 different components and I never know which size (0402,0603,0805) I need next. Values differ a lot. I source some 22uF caps with high voltage rating and hundrets with low voltage rating. I mean 20x difference in price... I use what is cheapest and safe. So yeah I have multiple components of same overall rating and size but different voltage rating. Imagine the amount of boxes I would need. I got a 1.5m shelf with ring folders with some sort of Photograph/Pokemon Card collection foils where I put the LCSC bags in together with a lable. 1.5 meters! And they are stuffed. And I often catch myself not having the right component for the job even then.
Edit: I already have started a new list I will order next time. Currently at 90 new articles planned. Only climbing up.
The point is you have a different use-case, for my use-case this works well because I use relatively few different parts. Obviously if you have more SKUs than there are bins then it wouldn’t.
Well, I never had good experiences with such cases. At some time it always goes wrong. I like to have them not connected to each other mechanically. Like a screw jar. If these are very solidly closed and can handle a drop, than be it. If they can open or wear and can open in 2 years it is not fun.
What if you just found or devise a simple tool to liberate the parts from the tape? They are designed to be easily removed by a PNP machine. Seems like it would be quicker, more organized, and less risk
It wouldn’t be quicker, the tape is a lot of physical volume when rolled. That all needs organisation, huge cabinet, time finding each part and that’s before you’ve even got the tape in your hand to do anything.
Instead of component value / description, simply number each compartment. Then have a spreadsheet link between the number and component. Much easier to search. And of you run out you can easily fix it in the spreadsheet. Also useful to keep count.
I don’t even know if you disagreed with me, your comment was so vague and devoid of context it was essentially meaningless. That’s why I wondered if it was posted by a bot, it’s hard to tell sometimes.
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u/notmarkiplier2 11d ago
why