My parts organizing/ordering workflow - for inspiration and discussion

[Toy Sun]

I hate parts ordering and all aspects around that part of pedal building (storage, too). I've come up with the following process. Although it looks like a lot of work, it doesn't have to be. Thought I'd share it and see what ideas others have.
My goals:
No keeping track of parts ordered/inventory.
No repacking of little bags that arrive.
Relatively easy way to expand storage, no need to go buy more little parts drawers
Cheap
Easy


Ok, I admit that I have access to a laser cutter, so I can make slick cardboard things, but I first did all this with just self cut boxes and pieces of paper. The fancy cut stuff isn't critical to the concept.

Stocking Parts
I take all the little bags and put them in cardboard box/drawer that fits them well. This can be a modified shoebox, a reclaimed box cut to size, or make a box from scratch. When parts arrive, I just file then in order (resistors/caps) or just put then in the appropriate divided box (ICs, Pots, etc...)
One box for resistors, one for caps, etc....


Building a Project
The concept came from "touch the part only once" - I print out the BOM, then work through it, pulling parts and putting them physically on the printed out BOM. I used to use thin tape to tape the parts down. Now I have these little re-usable trays. I have to print out the BOM at the correct size, which requires some .pdf gyrations on the computer/printer. That is the hardest part!


I try and do a bunch of projects at once, filling in all of their BOMs and writing down what I need. I then go sit at my real desk and put in the orders. No intermediate spreadsheets or logging anything more.  When it's time to build, my parts are all gathered and I've added the "fill ins" that I didn't have and arrived later.
Easy to see what is missing and preventing the building of the project. And easy to see when the parts arrive "what did I order this for??".

Enjoy and please share feedback/ideas.

John

[iainpunk]

that's way neater than my setup... one big pile of resistors, just search and find the right ones.
my IC's and transistors are better organised, by category, in used tea boxes
my tubes are super organised in shoe boxes, filling a few cupboards above my desk.
and my ordering routine: if i need some stuff without urgency, ill put them in my shopping cart on ebay, when i see cool components, i order them as well, (not for a project per sé, but to have them in stock, so i can get inspired by the component instead of looking for a specific component), and every time i really need a specific component fast, i order the whole bunch in one go!

cheers

[jatalahd]

It is always nice to see someone keeping things well organized. I would like to be organized, but it is difficult. I have tried to start organizing my component collection, but it is still half way. I found these boxes which can be divided nicely into the E12 component value set (10,12,15,18,22,27,33,39,47,56,68,82). So it has 6*2 little storages per each row:



The left box  has resistors from 10 ohms to 4.7Meg and at the bottom some sortiment of BJTs and JFETs (Labelling still under construction)
The right box has capacitors from 100pF to 4.7uF + some bigger electrolytics and a random sortiment of radial inductors at the bottom (Labelling still totally missing, but planned ...)

In addition to this I have a smaller box for potentiometers from 500 ohms to 1 Meg and then a "surprise box" for all random components. Then always a handful of random components scattered all over the desk ...

I am just building electric circuits (mainly audio stuff) for fun/hobby, and to educate myself, so my ordering is quite unorganized. And I don't even have a decent workbench, I just normally do breadboarding and soldering on at the writing desk. But I like to keep the component collection so that I have the most common parts always available. Ordering is sometimes difficult because often I cannot find everything that I need from one place. Especially with transistors I go a bit crazy and order too much of them, but better to have too much than less. When I need to order something specific, I always order something on the side, even if I don't have any need for it at the moment, to keep the order amounts reasonably steady (no small orders, no huge orders).

[GibsonGM]

Well done! I'm ashamed to admit that I have a toolbox with about 5 of the old RS resistor kits...all randomly piled in there loosely. It's like working thru a rat's nest to get the values you want, and often takes more time than placing components on the breadboard.     I do keep a bunch of 1k, 10k, 47k, 100k, 1M lying on the workbench tho.  Someday I hope to find SOME method that won't take me 2 weeks to set up, that I can RETURN R's to when I'm done prototyping.   Like Ian, I have the 'overflow' box I work out of more than anything, and most values are in there loose and not so hard to find!

My C's aren't quite so bad, I do sort them once in a while and put them back in the clear envelopes they came in    

[Ben N]

I recently did a major restock to get the parts to complete a boatload of projects in various stages of in/completion going back before Covid. In order to organize the ordering, I created two spreadsheets, one with one project per tab on which I listed all the outstanding parts, by category. The second spreadsheet has a tab for each category of parts (Rs; caps--ceramic/mica, film, electro; semiconductors; pots; etc.) As I went through the first spreadsheet tab by tab and line by line, I updated the second sheet, adding items and updating quantities.
Then I searched vendors for availability & price. The second sheet has additional columns for vendor, minimum order, price, and quantity ordered. For items at multiple vendors, I duplicated lines. As I found items at Tayda, Mouser and Small Bear, and added them to my carts, I marked them ordered.
In this way I managed to get everything I needed without much duplication, and at reasonable cost.

I imagine many people do it this way, but I store passive components by the first two digits of the value in segmented plastic boxes. That is, one section will hold 1R, 10R, 100R, 1K, 10k, 100k, 1M, in little plastic Tayda bags. The next one has 1.2 x (1, 10, 100...), then 1.5, and so on. Same for films & electros.

I thought about doing the BOM thing to organize the parts per project, but I find for me it's enough to just scan the component list for whatever value I'm up to and get them out and on the bench at once, without the extra step of organizing all the components before populating. Keeps the clutter down.