How to store your precious parts nicely

During the past 30 years, I have used like 100 different ways to store parts. From plastic drawers, plastic carrying cases, small bags, ikea boxes, etc. The thing got out of hand as the collection grew. Most of the time the parts remained in their shipping bags, were difficult to find, and more than once I ended up ordering more.

So what works for me after all those years?

The one thing that seemed to work nicely were the small carton boxes that Vishay / Dale use for their resistors.

They are nice, easy to write to, and the size seems perfect from small to moderate quantities. So after all those years, I decided to open up kicad and draw some templates. Here is what I ended up with


boxes.jpg


The boxes come in 3 sizes: 100x40x40 mm, 100x20x40 mm, 100x10x40 mm

The templates come as pdf that should be printed on some heavier A4 paper at 100%. They follow the traditional paper craft rules. You cut on straight lines, and you lightly score the dotted ones. And you can use some tape or glue to keep them together.

I have already move some of my collection into these, and I have to say they save so much space in comparison to plain plastic bags. They also fit nicely to samla boxes by ikea, making things super easy to keep out of the way, but also to search through.

I hope you will find these useful
 

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