[sdiy] Through-Hole MLCC capacitors

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

On Jul 19, 2017, at 11:47 AM, Mattias Rickardsson <mr at analogue.org> wrote:
>> From: rsdio at audiobanshee.com [mailto:rsdio at audiobanshee.com]
>>> ...
>>> Kits are irrelevant when a company like Mouser will put any
>>> number of components into a bag labeled with your own
>>> customer part number. If you want to make a kit, just sign up
>>> for an account with Mouser and create a Saved Project. This
>>> will allow you to enter a "Customer Part #" for each item,
>>> and you can share your kit with others or order it again very easily.
> 
> Some problems I've encountered with this is (iirc) that you can't give
> a name ("Customer Part #") to a component until you have put it in a
> project or a cart, and that a component can only have one name (which
> might become clumsy when using it for many projects perhaps), and also
> that you cannot search for the named components - only find them in
> your projects of carts. Does it even exist outside a project, as a
> general component metadata? Yes, it magically appears next time you
> put a component in a cart. In the end I've only used the "Customer
> Part #" as some kind of stupid notes when ordering the components of a
> project, and then becoming annoyed when it turns up with an irrelevant
> name in other carts some year later... but that's not really the point
> of a part number, is it?
> Btw there is also something similar called "My Notes" on every product
> page, but it doesn't seem to be searchable either.
> Or did I misunderstand how to use it all? :-)
> 
> /mr

I also see the bug where the Customer Part # is the same in every project. Usually, I enter the designation, such as R42, when creating a project. For common values like 0-Ohm jumpers and 0.1uF bypass caps, it becomes impossible because each new project changes that part in previous projects.

My partial solution is to select a Customer Part # like JUMPER for the 0-Ohm resistors and BYPASS for the 0.1uF capacitors or MIDI for headers that have a certain number of pins. So far, this seems to be a workaround, but we really should report the bugs to Mouser to encourage them to fix the issues.

Thankfully, my preferred assembly shop hand-marks each Mouser bag after reviewing my Bill of Materials and all of the Gerber and other CAD files. I just have to make sure that whatever Customer Part # appears there is not somehow confusing. The Manufacturer Part # is always there, and I make sure that my BoM reflects that.

Brian

p.s. There is also a bug where you can sort by Customer Part # just once, but after you delete or replace something in your cart, the sorting reverts to something else but leaves the popup showing Customer Part #. The only way to get it sorted again is to select a different sort key and then select Customer Part # again. These bugs slow me down on huge projects, but the benefits of Mouser's system outweigh the bugs.