Component Storage Box

[Fei]

Can anybody point to some cheap component storage box (I have already looked at Jameco...) I was thinking those tackle boxes for fishing..

 

[zachtheterrible]

Hi fei. U don't have ur location filled in, so I don't know if you have a walmart around you. Anyway, I picked up a nice little organizer thing for 4 bucks, has about 15-20 compartments, and you can reorganize them because they have little seperator tabs that you can pull out and put in. And they are just the right size for components.

 

[MrMikey83]

K-Mart sells a couple different cases with plastic drawers in them. They are both about 19 inches high, 14 wide and 6 deep. One has 60 small drawers in it (6 accross, 10 down), and the other has 36 small drawers on top and 6 larger drawers on bottom.
Both are about $5 i think. Sometimes they go on sale BOGO 50% off
~Mike

 

[samcheetah]

for storing components the best and cheapest thing i have ever seen are match boxes :lol:

being a student and a hobbyist i dont have a great variety of electronic components but i dont have much of each type. so i decided to use match boxes. simple !!!!!!!!!!!

 

[plot]

i use a tackle box...

i also got some anti-static foam stuff from jameco which i put in a flat storag thing that came with my tackle box... so i can easily stick all my IC's on it and not have to worry about it. 8)

 

[Dean Huster]

I've been through about every storage method that could be discovered on this earth. I began when I was a teenager back in the early 1960s with orange juice cans, back when they were made of steel, you needed a can opener and they only came in the little-bitty size. I've done the matchboxes, gluing bunches of them together, but they didn't hold up well for me.

I finally ended up in the 1970s and 1980s buying 50-drawer Akro-Mills parts cabinets when Wal-Mart, our big U.S. discount chain, would have them on sale for $12 each, buying two at a time. Since then, I've acquired others of varying sizes as well as big industrial steel storage drawers. Now, I have around 600 little plastic drawers available and around 120 big metal drawers and still run out of space. I have the little divided plastic boxes, shoeboxes, bins, etc.

The problem with our hobby is that the parts are so varied in size (transformers and motors down to SMT) and a single type of part such as a resistor can have 150 values each for 2W, 1W, 1/2W, 1/4W and 1/8W making storage a nightmare. In the case of resistors, I use four 36-drawer parts cabinets for my most-used 1/4 watt resistors, stacking them for six columns of 24 drawers for all values from 10 ohms to 9.1M ohms. All the other power ratings ("wattages") are stored in the metal drawers by value, all wattages mixed together in each value. I keep all my 1% resistors in small coin envelopes, one per value. Doing those in drawers would be prohibitive at 96 values per decade.

ICs, transistors and diodes are also in the parts drawers, but I long ago quit trying to keep them in any kind of numerical order as any new parts always created havoc. Now they go into numbered spaces ("drawer 84, section D") and I use the word processor to keep track of the parts letting it do the alphabetizing, looking up "2N3904" to find "34B" listed for the location while "2N3906" may have location "53D". That way, I can allot the proper amount of space for the number of parts of each type I have and move their location if they all get used up to allow for other parts or if I get bunches more in where I need more room.

I've gotten 'way off on a tangent here. The whole point I was really going to make was that you ought to go ahead and get some decent parts storage, but do it as you can afford it. Buy a cabinet now and another one later. Just try to keep them all the same brand and size so that they'll later stack nicely together for a storage system.

Dean

 

[samcheetah]

wow!!! you have spent so much time planning all this. i like that

but for the time being ill have to stick with matchboxes :lol:

 

[tansis]

Taking a leaf from the Shaker book of design
a big wooden box on wheels under the bench
makes not only a good footrest, but an excellent
place for scavanged oversize items that will be of
use (hopefully) one day.

 

[Dean Huster]

I might add that when I was a kid, I glommed onto (procured) all of the old cast-off cabinets that came my way. My corner of our old farmhouse basement looked like a furniture second-hand store, but the various drawers in all the cabinets gave me a lot of space for my new hobby for all the orange juice cans and other boxes for sorting parts. As I and my hobby became more sophisticated (i.e., we got off an allowance and started earning wages), the storage methods improved and furniture started disappearing.

By the way, another storage medium is those plastic boxes that 2x2 photographic slides might come in, depending upon your photo supplier and whether or not you use a camera for slides. In my case, our school curriculum department took LOTS of slides and use a single photo processor in town who sent all the slides back in these nice 2-piece plastic boxes. The curriculum center just threw them out, so I had them throw them my way. They can be used as boxes in and of themselves or separated into two halves and used to line the bottom of larger drawers for parts storage. Glue the box halves to sheets of Masonite or 1/4" plywood to make lift-out layers where you can stack them four, five or six deep in an old dresser or bureau drawer. Use your imagination to come up with a substitute for the plastic boxes.

Egg cartons have sections. Plastic 35mm film containers work for a lot of things. Used medicine bottles (pill bottles) are useful. The more that you can get that are identical in size, the better.

Dean