Organising Your Electronic Components (DIY Guitar Pedals)

Some tips to help you organise your electronic components

[Headphoneaddict]

Hi, I have done something similar to organize DIY parts.

What I ended up doing was to print the labels on (very commonly used) 80g/m^2 paper, then use a sheet of 160g/m^2 paper which i taped to the 80g sheet with double sided tape for added thickness (as most consumer printers won't print thick paper). Finally I used transparent packing tape over the whole sheet so it wont fudge easily from being touched by greasy fingertips etc. Lastly I used a knife to cut the labels. To get perfect sizing for the labels I used Excel and set up a grid with the dimensions for the labels.

It turned out way better than using a Dymo label printer and saved some pennies as the labels for the Raaco drawers are pretty expensive.

When I use drawer separators I use the Dymo inside the drawers for marking what's in the compartment, say if I have M3 screws in 3 sizes, such as 8, 12 and 16 mm for example.

[shanalaurenc]

Thanks for showing the cabinet I'm off to buy one now due to your great review. I wish Raaco would do it in other colors a nice lilac or blue in the future.

[lelandclayton]

Works alright for a small inventory. What I have done is used NO3 Coin Envelopes and a super big Trading card box. This way I can have the part values listed in detail on the Envelope like a mini Datasheet. I also have Index cards as dividers in the box so I can separate different types of components. Now this doesn't work so well with ICs but the part cabinets work fine for that. Be sure to line the bottom of the trays will anti-static foam mostly to protect the pins.

[SubSickle]

Thank you very much. It was really useful and the timing couldn't be any better because I'm thinking of buying cabinet for my components.

[bbrenz]

Super helpful, thanks! I was just wondering how I'd organize my part orders from tayda.

[Gledii]

great tip as always. unfortunatly due to my tiny appartment i had to improvise with a CD case. It works fine for resistors and small caps. OF course for low demand builders :P

[DimitriPappas]

Great setup & useful advice ! I've been storing my small components in plastic tray compartments / storage boxes... the cabinet/drawer system looks far better for components actually

[barbasbandas]

Hey nice video. I am starting to build pedals but when I am prototyping I mess with a lot of components and then I dont know how to store them because the there is all kinds of resistors values and it sucks to measure their values one by one and store them... how can I solve this?

[krishna]

i like the older cabinets i think there ESD safe to.

[VoltMX]

Are there hole to wallmount those Raaco's ?

[CyberKerb]

where do you get a racco caninet for 40 bucks? I can only find them for over 100! rsonline is 177 and mouser no longer has raaco. :(

[DaveCurran]

I use the Raaco cabinets as well, very nice. Rather than cutting the drawer labels by hand, I found the 9mm label printer labels slot it nicely, and the one I was using could fix the width, so it was easy to do. Here's my review: