Like most people, I’m overwhelmed with small quantities of parts from Mouser, Farnell, and Digi-key. Most of them reusable, some of them valuable, it can be a pain storing and keeping track of them. I have some of those cunning little SMD compartments from China, which are great for passives and other small parts, but for slightly larger ICs, and for parts that I don’t use so often, they’re not ideal.
I think I’ve found a better way to store those parts, though. I sourced some 3” x 5” antistatic bags for a pittance, lasercut a box to hold them in, and printed off some simple labels to keep track of what’s in each one. Here’s the end result:
So far, it seems to work pretty well, allowing me to store a lot of different parts in only a very small amount of space.
I’m particularly proud of the design of the box: it’s entirely snap together, with no glue or fastenings, inspired by this post on lasercut clip joins. The whole box can be cut out of a single A4 sheet of 3mm acrylic; the DXF is available here.
How do you store your electronic parts?