There is a new post at Hackaday detailing a very cool 3D printed resistor organizer. Resistors are an indispensable component for DIY tube projects and we typically collect a large variety of both resistance values and power ratings. If you’re into boutique parts and Holco/Riken/Caddock flavors, it is even more overwhelming. On the upside, resistors are pretty cheap to buy in bulk; but if you buy in bulk and don’t have a way to organize things, you end up with a tangled mess of kinked-up leads and unmarked parts.
That was me a couple years ago: always buying extras and just tossing them into a parts organizer with too few cubbies and not enough labels. Eventually I got sick of repeatedly buying the same values because I was too lazy to sift through my inventory. Doing a little reading on hobby forums, I came across a really cheap and useful solution: trading card binder pages.
Trading card pouches are just the right length to store resistors without having to bend up the legs. This is best for 1W and smaller sizes, so I still have some storage for power resistors. But I also don’t buy power resistors in bulk very often (because I’m cheap), so there’s less to store. Go for either tape and reel (see above) or keep your loose resistors in baggies:
The parts baggies you get from Mouser/Digikey are already labeled, so you just need to fold it with the value facing up and slide it into the card slot. Easy peasy. Best of all, the trading card pages and the binders themselves are easy to find. The only downside to this resistor storage solution that I’ve found so far is the high likelihood of dumping everything on the floor if you pick the binder up upside-down (true story, twice). I’m currently on the lookout for a Hello Kitty trapper keeper with a zipper to solve this. For science.
Bench update: the push pull mono-block project made its first music through a speaker yesterday. I’m looking forward to cranking out the second amp and posting the project for others.
wauwatosa tube factory 