Does a colorblind person have a chance?

[caxxxxxx]

I've really been enjoying electronics the last few months, enough that I have been considering school. But I am color-deficient. I see colors, but often have a hard time with those bands on resistors or if there is a light green and a tan wire, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them (and certain other colors). Would I stand a chance in the real world if I wanted to make a career out of this?

[sonidos]

It's possible. The tech who worked with me had some color-blindness issues and he was building smt hardware by hand for us on a regular basis.

[Magura]

Sure, it just takes more effort.

I'm colorblind with a capital "C", and have been doing ok.


Magura

[Andrew Eckhardt]

It could also depend on how much school. A lot of engineers never see wires or parts at all. As a technician, SMDs usually have etched, monochromatic, or no markings anyway, and a lot of the circuits they go into use few if any wires. If you are in development or manufacturing you'll be dealing with all the documentation you need and possibly a lot of the same circuit, so you could probably make it fly. As a repair tech it might get to be a pain now and then, because you never know what you'll get, and you may only see a unit once in your career.

[wakibaki]

You don't have to build things yourself. It's more convenient if you do tho', and there are ways round the problem. Fewer and fewer components are identified by colour codes. You can identify any resistor with a DMM, it might take a little time.

Definitely a minor consideration for a determined person, don't be put off. If you can draw a circuit that works that's much more important. Don't mention it in any interview unless specifically asked or the environment is obviously supportive.

w

[herm]

Don't let your inability to see color slow you down!
Most Surface mount is not colored - just numbered.

My friend in school was colorblind. During lab tests
when we had to prove we could build a circuit, he would
just hold a resistor up and I would read off the colors to
him, then go back to my work. The whole class (including
the professor) got a good laugh from hearing me
periodically saying "Green, Green, Black, Gold" or such...

herm

[Printer2]

My brother is partially colour blind, found out before he took an electronics course in college. He has been making a living designing electronic equipment for over 25 years.

Need I say more?

[sangram]

I'm not colour blind (I think, though my ex used to say I was), but I never use color codes even when looking at repair jobs - I usually read them off a service manual anyway, as the resistors have so much dust and grime it's impossible to tell from just looking at them.

For new resistors I usually keep them in strips with values marked with a pen on the strip - with the itty bitty 1/8W parts it's usually impossible for anyone with even 20/20 vision to read the colours on them. And some resistors now have values written on them (most Dales I've seen), so I don't know if there is even an issue!

The only possible problem is when people put up those funny multicolored graphs with lots of trace data on one graph - telling them apart might be an issue. I can remember some of the FRD tools have this kind of plotting, as well as some posters on this site when they publish results for their creations. I don't think there is any other issue at all - most everything is marked nowadays, not striped.

[Steerpike]

I'm not colour blind, and I have problems reading modern resistors! Decades ago, resistor paint was much more bold and saturated in colour. Now, brown, red and orange is almost indistinguishable, as are grey and white. (A pocket microscope is very useful here - the type that look like a ball-point pen)

If you are servicing, many times a faulty resistor has got hot enough that the colours have been altered by the heat, so the bands are only slightly useful.

got a good laugh from hearing me
periodically saying "Green, Green, Black, Gold"

Nothing funny about a good old 55-Ohm resistor!

[Juergen Knoop]

I'm not colour blind, and I have problems reading modern resistors!

so true! Those blue resistor bodies have been intruduced by a bunch of idiots!
regards