People seem to like my mobile component library, so I decided to make a post about it in my blog also, maybe someone who likes it also, can build one for him-/herself.

It is a box from the BOX-ALL series by Aidetek. I got mine from eBay for about 30 dollars from http://myworld.ebay.com/smtzone. The box was well packaged in bubble wrap and included labels with adhesive and some kind of cheap tweezers that were kind of useless. About the labels; you can get a .doc template for the labels from Aideteks homepage, but I have to warn you, be very careful when inserting the label page into your printer, mine decided to eat it diagonally and ruined the whole page, also some of the labels got stuck inside the printer. Very annoying. So, my friend who owns the same box, found similar labels and made a new template, and problem solved.

But now to the box itself, it has 144 enclosures, each 18.3 x 16.7 x 10.2 mm in size and the box itself is 229.2 x 156.8 x 37.4 mm, so quite compact I’d say. The build quality is quite good, the plastic outside feels solid and durable, inside the comparment lids feel a bit cheap though and few of the lids don’t want to stay closed, so I improvised a hack to fix the problem; I cut out a piece of paper approximately the size of the box and inserted it between the two sides, since the compartment lids interlock somewhat, the piece of paper improves the locking of the lids.

So what do I keep in my library? Resistors, capacitors and LEDs mostly… Specifically 50 values of 0603 and 0402 resistors, some 0402 and 0603 capacitors for decoupling and bypassing and LEDs for indication, debugging etc.. Where are the components from? I bought 0603 and 0402 resistor kits from eBay for about 13 dollars a kit, LEDs also ordered from eBay and the capacitors  are from Farnell. Capacitors seem to be cheaper in Farnell and if you order X7R than you get X7R. The specific values of the components can be seen on the images. Will probably add some SMD buttons, slide switches and connectors when I get some time…

In conclusion, I have to say that I like the box a lot. It makes assembly/soldering a lot more comfortable and faster, no need to strip the tape of the resistor strip etc. Well worth investment.

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