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OK... so i ordered a pile of resistors for some different builds and I'm anticipating a long night of sorting through them to find their values. Does anyone have a trick to streamlining this process? I was thinking of using a strip of double-sided tape on some card stock with the values written above the tape, then when I identify a value, I stick one of the leads on the tape below that label - then (with a bit of luck) the resistors will stick there while I do the builds and be ready to be double-checked prior to installing. I guess the same process could be applied to caps, but they seem a little easier to categorize. Any suggestions? Thanks - Ed

I've found measuring them on the multimeter is quicker than color identifying them. More accurate of course becuaes the meter tells you what the value is, where the color code tells you what it's supposed to be. Others are probably a lot faster than I am with the color codes...

Where did you order them from that they came in a pile instead of sorted by value?

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thanks again for the reply. I don't have a mm yet 'cause I haven't ordered my $50 worth from Circuitspecialists yet (your suggestion from yesterday)!! Which leads me to your question... I'm planning to order most of the components I need from circuit specialists along with a couple tools to get me to $50 so I can get my free multimeter. I'm assuming that the resistors will all come together in a little bag unlabled, but if they come sorted that would be sweet (I'm ordering 26 different values).

My guess is that they're come individually packaged. Mouser has them labeled and bagged separate. Small Bear has them bagged separate, but not labeled (which is fine because I can figure out what is what from color codes and some DMM testing).

When I run into situations like a big unsorted pil, I start looking for similar color codes. That way, I have all of my 10, 22, 47, 68, etc types in piles. Then I test a few, find out which multiplier color band is which, and put them in the little plastic baggies with white write-on labels from Small Bear. They sell a 100-pack of bags for $4.

Once I've got the resistors in their bags, I group the bags into ohms, k-ohms, and meg-ohms, and put those into larger bags. In other words, I have a big bag marked "k-ohms" and in it are lots of little bags of resistors from 1k through just shy of 1meg.

I find this system to be really helpful. I have a similar setup for caps. I can find all the parts I need for a project in just minutes (most of the time).

I'm usually not this neat and organized, but I was looking for some parts one night, couldn't find what I was looking for, then ordered the parts. A few days later I found that I already had most of what I just ordered. The third time that happened, I got really mad and then got organized.

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