[sdiy] parts storage needed

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Friday 11 March 2005 10:55 pm, synth at oldmail.charlielamm.com wrote:
> I have a lot of IC's, they are quite disorganized, and I need some
> suggestions for storage. I was thinking about something like this (I'd buy
> several)
>
> http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=145&item=SB-10&
>type=store

That sort of thing is fine if you have some small quantity of parts you want 
to carry around as spares,  or for field service,  or similar.  I wouldn't go 
there for "a lot of ICs",  though.  You'd need too many of them,  and 
inserting new numbering in the middle of an existing sequence can become 
quite a chore.

I've had little plastic drawers,  small boxes,  and all sorts of other stuff 
over the years,  and currently I'm using small plastic bagz.  These are 
ziplock bags and have a hole punched at the top,  so I can store a whole 
bunch of them on a ring,  to keep them in order and make searches quicker.  
I've gone pretty much of the way through a box of 1000,  now I need to find 
some more.  <g>  These are roughly 3x5 inches,  smaller would probably be 
okay for a lot of stuff,  depending on how many of a given part you have on 
hand.

For some chips that I have a lot of,  I keep them in the sort of tubes those 
chips come in.

> Questions:
> --Is static electricity a problem? Should I line this with some kind of
> conductive surface material?  Maybe just for the CMOS stuff and
> fet-type-op amps?

I've lined the bottom of one or two of those boxes with black foam , from when 
I was still doing field service on organs.  If you're using plastic bags,  
you can line them with a bit of aluminum foil or stick the chips in bits of 
black foam or whatever.

> --Anyone have a better idea?  What do some of you DIY mavens use?

See above.  :-)