I recently wrote a bit about eating my own dog food relative to a small design I’ve put together. Today, I’m moving along with that process and kitting it all up, so I thought I’d pass on some hints on making a good parts kit. I’m looking at this from the perspective of Screaming Circuits, but my guess is that it would fit for just about anyone assembling your prototypes. Even George’s PCB Assembly and Dry Goods Emporium down past the railroad tracks.
If you’re sending all of the parts, you can leave them in the original package. Just be sure to clearly mark the packages with your reference designators. If you’ve got to cut your strips down, you may need to re-package the parts, as I am. I got these little handy dandy anti static bags from Digi-Key (part number 16-1032-ND) for less than ten cents each in a pack of 100. You can use the little pink anti-static bags too.
I’ve labeled each bag with the reference designator, the component manufacturer and the manufacturer’s part number. The more ambiguity that you can remove without adding excess clutter, the better. Making the labels was easy. I used Avery #5366 labels and mail merged from my BoM spreadsheet.
You can also put the component value on the label as well, if you can do it without clutter. Maybe line 1, reference designator; line 2, manufacturer and manufacturer part number; line 3, component value. Once you’ve got the bags labeled, go ahead and fill them up with the parts needed for your assembly. Add in 5% extra just in case (50% extra for 0201 passives).
If any of your parts are moisture sensitive either leave them in the original moisture barrier packaging or let us know that they need to be baked prior to assembly. That will prevent popcorn in the reflow oven.
Duane Benson
You’ll like it better or my name isn’t Orville Partenbacher