Need part stock advice - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: vvulture
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 21, 2024, 11:50:01 pm
content: Hi all. Claude here from Sydney. 52yrs old finally decided to pursue a dream not-for profit hobby of mine... tinkering/repairing electronic stuff.. lolI'll mainly be doing SMD work on motherboards, graphic cards and whatever else gets thrown my way..I've been doing mega amounts of research and have acquired an arsenal of new equipment/tools/parts etc etc... very exciting..even managed to kick my wife out of my required workshop space in exchange for a fancy laptop... hehehehe...Anyway, im now at the stage where i would like to stock some spare components.As i will be doing mainly SMD work, would some of you be kind enough to guide me with suggestions on what parts to keep on hand ?ieMost common SMD sizes and values for- Resistors- Capacitors ( ceramic, electrolytic, tantalum )- Inductorsand what ever else you can think of ?Thanks guys...

author: PGPG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2024, 10:57:38 am
content: I have never repaired motherboards, graphic cards so don't know what kind of elements like to be broken there. Isn't it so that just the whole board is element that is replaced nowadays?Regarding hobby. From my point of view 0603 is the reasonable size that you can hand solder and if you design 2 layer board it is helpful that you can go with track under it (under 0402 you can't). In the size 0402 I am using only 100nF blocking capacitors as you have to place them as close to ICs as possible and bigger part disturb other tracks (but I don't assemble my designs myself).Having a reasonable part stock seems for me no sense nowadays. In 70s I was going every week to see what interesting parts are able to buy and then everything I have designed was designed to use only parts I have at stock because otherwise it could take years to gather the parts. As even in Poland (post communist country) we have a distributor having practically everything you can need than I suppose such situation is everywhere. Find the distributor (ore use word wide one like Digikey or Mouser) and when selecting a part to use just check if you will be able to buy it. Then if you use some 0603 reasitor you can buy each time 100pcs of it and you will build your warehouse.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2024, 11:17:12 am
content: Most common? E6 series. Or realistically E24. Sizes: 0402 0603 0805 1206.Stocking inductors is very difficult. But that's OK, they almost never need to be replaced since they are physically robust, and other things break before.You might want to have some generic ferrite beads and SMD fuses, those are most likely to fail on computer stuff.

author: indeterminate
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2024, 11:43:31 am
content: what parts to keep on hand ?nothing that you are not going to yous your selfi have a set of caps & resistors in 1206 sizeif i am fixing sumthing and i need to order a specific component then the customer pays.if i need to order a 100 of them then the customer pays for 100There are just way to many combinations to bother to stock them especially when you can get just about anything in 5 days.

author: vvulture
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 23, 2024, 12:59:57 am
content: Thank you for all the replies guys. Much appreciated.The most popular theme seems to be that there is no need to keep a stockpile of parts.Other people have suggested just keeping a stock of donor boards.Thanks again.

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 23, 2024, 01:24:03 am
content: surface mount:22pF, 100nF, 2.2uF 0805100ohm, 1kOhm, 100kOhm 0805through-hole:2.2uF capacitor1kOhm resistorI do more prototyping than repairs.A shorter list for me would be 2uF smd,2uF through-hole and 1kOhm through-hole.Long time ago I've bought a lot of stuff and it turned out that 99% was useless to me. E.g., I've bought some wires and connectors that I thought cheap, look good, useful. Some rj-45 connectors, a lot of different TVS diodes.. Again, mostly waste of money.Much better approach is to use limited budget and prepare a list of parts to buy. If i need to assemble 3 prototypes, I buy exact amount: 22pf x 6, 100nf x 33, stm32h7b0 x 3, etc. If something goes wrong, then I harvest parts from my previous prototypes.I think it depends a lot on your area of interest. E.g., I had a stockpile of tiny rivets, spacers and screws to experiment with ridge gap waveguides. I doubt that many people use rivets with PCBs. Thus, stockpiling based on real experience probably makes more sense.