Most common annoyances

[tegendemuur]

I have very precise drill bits but mis-drill enclosures all the time.
If the soldering iron is on at some point I am going to burn myself or something near me.
About 50% of my new ideas or designs are bad or flawed in some way.

For some reason, when I am hunched over with the chair pushed away from the desk so I can bend over deeper, doing some finicky stuff that holds all my attention, I tend to put the iron on my lap. The burn starts with a sort of itch when it eats through my pants... So that's good, I guess. I have always been on time saving myself from my idiocy, for now. Thank god I never wear track suits or things like that.

 

[owlexifry]

For some reason, when I am hunched over with the chair pushed away from the desk so I can bend over deeper, doing some finicky stuff that holds all my attention, I tend to put the iron on my lap. The burn starts with a sort of itch when it eats through my pants... So that's good, I guess. I have always been on time saving myself from my idiocy, for now. Thank god I never wear track suits or things like that.

lol

you’ve just reminded me…

tip update: don’t build barefoot or with just socks.

one time i was wearing socks.
leant over the desk (and the iron) to reach for something at the back, socks gave way, slipped over and fell on top of the iron.
only burned my forearm so that was ok.

 

[tegendemuur]

lol

you’ve just reminded me…

tip update: don’t build barefoot or with just socks.

one time i was wearing socks.
leant over the desk (and the iron) to reach for something at the back, socks gave way, slipped over and fell on top of the iron.
only burned my forearm so that was ok.

Another day, another marking!

It's an amazing feat for us men to make it past our 20th birthday, because of how thoughtlessly we tend to act. It gets better over time, but considering physically harm, we'll always be our own worst enemy.

 

[Fama]

tip update: don’t build barefoot or with just socks.

Do you think I wear clothes? In my own house? In the summer?

 

[HamishR]

haha this is exactly how i manage resistors.
i have them lined up in an old rectangular bendicks bittermints box with card dividers for 1K, 10K, 100K, 1M


yeah but one day you'll knock that box over and the resistors will fly out of the bags and go everywhere. sorting that mess would be horrendous.

I have them all in order in two rows, packed fairly tight in an old photographic paper box with a cardboard divider between the two rows. It's a box which once held 500 sheets of Ilford 8x10 B+W multigrade gloss paper. (Man I really don't miss those late-night printing sessions in the darkroom). I'm so used to digging in for resistors that I know where 1K, 10K, !00K etc are.

 

[Robert]

I also put a little colored cardboard piece between each series, so right after each board it starts with the lowest, 1k 10k 100k, 1M, 10M. Feel like I am honoring the tireless efforts of the librarian!

I don't have any sort of dividers in mine but I do have a bookmark... When I pull a value I move the bookmark to that location so there's no hunting when it's time to return it.

 

[Fama]

I don't have any sort of dividers in mine but I do have a bookmark... When I pull a value I move the bookmark to that location so there's no hunting when it's time to return it.

Oh man, the great tips just keep on coming! Although I do pull out multiple values at once often But no reason I couldn't have 4 bookmarks at once or whatever.

 

[Locrian99]

I keep capacitors and resistors in 3 ring binders the pages like you would use for baseball cards. There was quite a few pages. Theres a website that has the 25 most used component values the guy got from farming all the data from PPCB. Theres some flaws in his method i found when looking at his raw data but its close enough for this. I made a binder of most used components so i took the top 50 resistor values (6 pages) and the top 25 cap values (3 pages) then just added a page of diodes for the last page. Ive found i can build a lot of pedals out of just this one binder and its not a ton of resistor pages to flip through. Ive found it streamlined the board populating a ton for me.

 

[HamishR]

I don't have any sort of dividers in mine but I do have a bookmark... When I pull a value I move the bookmark to that location so there's no hunting when it's time to return it.

Same here - I use a little sheet of prototype board. It will never get used for anything else!

 

[HamishR]

Last year I bought a clear plastic box with a lid which is evenly divided into 3 rows of (I think) 8 spaces. It's what I use to sort my box caps, so picking caps is now super quick. It fits all my most commonly used values. Any weird values are still in little bags but that's ok!

I tried cutting the zip off a zip lock bag for my resistors but sadly it hasn't made as much difference as I'd hoped. I'm still getting resistors stuck. The main issue with resistors is that I have so many different values. Whenever I need more resistors i usually buy them in lots of 50 or 100 because they're inexpensive.

 

[Feral Feline]

Store the bags upright in some oblong container, so you can cut the zip lock part off? You can then browse the values like vinyl, comics, ...

That's kind of how I do it, but I still keep the zip-lock for reasons Owlexifry noted.

The bookmark Idea is good. I divide my resistors into
Ohms
1k–10k
11k–100k
101k–500k
501k–999k
1M+

So having COLOURed Bookmarks to help identify the sections will be another improvement for me.




As for desoldering, I've had plenty of practice at it.

The most recent pad-failure was due to :
- me overworking the are, first trying to add a cap in parallel and then changing tactics and taking the cap out and then solder-sucking out the last bit of solder and — schlurp! Pads gone. Some copper-braid might've been the better choice, but I've found it's just not as effective as a good solder-sucker.
- an older PCB with not very robust pads in the first place.

Sometimes, I can get in and out with the desoldering lickity-split. If anything, I should practice with braid a bit more.

 

[HamishR]

I've just rediscovered braid after watching plenty of Psionic Audio. I used it to remove some ICs from a friend's Boss pedal and it worked way better than a solder sucker would have. I'm thinking it might be the way to go if I ever have to replace a pot on a PCB.

 

[tegendemuur]

I guess I could add the fact that I keep buying PCBs at somewhat regular intervals, but the .txt file of needed components keeps expanding, and I really, really should go to digikey or whatever and force myself into the hassle of looking them up and make a wishlist. For some reason, my coffee rushes have me focus on my ideas instead of getting started...Like, slowsly building the kits I got instead of rushing them, folder reorganisation, naming and renaming, tweaking notes in each's txt file... There's no end to micro-managing, instead of cutting through the real meat. I can't be alone in this.