Hello,
I generally don't like to make my first post on a new forum a question, but I don't have anything to add to this one at the moment.

I'm about 99% sure that this information is on this forum, and 100% that it is online somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. I want to find out what, if anything, the color of the body of a resistor indicates. I have just lucked up on a huge lot of components and I notice that the resistor body colors range from blue to several shades of gray and brown.

I have searched everywhere for this information, but I always find resistor band color code information and never anything on the body color.

Thanks in advance, as I am sure you guys will know the answer.

 

Depends on which company made them

__________________
Mike
My website: www.ElectroBird.net

 

way to make me feel stupid man
J/K Thanks.
So the body color doesn't necessarily mean anything?

 

I think the paint on high wattage resistors is more resistant to heat.

 

It means tons, if you've had a lot of experience with a wide number of makers of resistors. But nothing you could really put down on paper as 'fact' too many cheap Chinese knockoff companies that put out stuff that has no comparison elsewhere. I know from experience the resistor packs that I bought that are blue in colour are 1%, and the ones that are 5% are tan in colour. But I don't even know who made mine =)

__________________

 

Blue are usually metal film. I don't remember ever seeing a blue carbon resistor.

 

Thanks for all the responses. From what I'm reading, I have 1 5000 pc roll of 30ohm 1% metal film, and 19 5000pc rolls of various values at 5%. Since they are all ~ the same size, I assume they are all 1/4W. I have a lot of other components that I am trying to identify, but I will give them all a good googleing before asking here.

Is it ok to trade on components here?

 

I don't see why not, good luck overcoming the "shipping cost" barrier though!

__________________
Mike
My website: www.ElectroBird.net

 

I was just thinking that I have a lot of resistors, capacitors, trim pots, some stepper motors, and power transformers etc, and I really need a pic programmer for pic24, so the shipping burden would likely be more on me since I would obviously have to ship quite a bit to come to equal value of a pickit2 or equivalent. Just a thought. I would imagine that most people who have an extra pic programmer to trade on would have a large collection of basic components anyway though. I guess I will just have to save my pennies and get the $50 kit from microchip.

 

Are you starting with the pic24?

__________________
Mike
My website: www.ElectroBird.net

 

Yeah. I realize that a lot of people think that one should start with an 8 bit controller, and I see the logic, but I have done software development for a long time so architecture isn't a concern.

 

Resistor body color meaning
Resistor body color markings do not normally have much meanings. Sometimes they tell about the resistor's temperature coefficents which are not much of use for normal electronics experiments.

But there are two resistor body colors which you should know what they need if youre fixing some electronics circuit. Resistor body colors white and blue are used to mark non-flammable resistors and fusible resistors. If you encounter tjis type of resistor in the circuit do not replace it with normal reistor because this would cause fire danger is something goes wring in the circuit. Non-flammable resistors and fusible resisotrs are designed so that they don't catch fire when they overheat. When fusible resistor overheats it cuts the current flowing like a fuse.

found this on google im new to electronics so dont know if its true

 

Thanks mart_1986. That's good information to know. I wouldn't say that I love my house, but it's better than the alternative, so I don't want to burn it down.

Kudos on the google skills. I searched that for a while and couldn't find anything.