The Hamsters are getting new printed circuit boards. So far, we've been going over improvements and additions for the PCBs and making sure that we haven't introduced any errors, like inadvertently forgetting to have a power input. Oh, wait—that's one of the problems we're correcting with the new boards. Now that the new board layouts have been exhaustively checked and the boards ordered, it's time to get the components that will go onto the boards: resistors, capacitors, LEDs, various microchips, etc. I'd sort of been hoping that since the boards were going to be populated (have all the components soldered on) elsewhere, that perhaps the component acquisition process would also be taking place elsewhere.
This morning, Dr. Smith drops a copy of the new schematic on my workbench and says, "Why don't you make up a parts list for all the parts we need for the new boards."
"Okay," says I. Easy enough. Let's go shopping!
Six hours later, eyeballs aching, I'm wondering why there are seventy different kinds of 10K Ohm surface mount resistors. How different from each other can they be? (Don't answer me that, I'll find out tomorrow from Dr. Smith.) And why are the part numbers written in such tiny letters?
Office Extrovert wanders into the lab and I ask him, "How do you know what kind of resistors to get? There's all these different tolerances and stuff."
OE shrugs. "Dr. Science just hands me a list and I order them."
"Oh."
246 words | July 6, 2004 06:51 PM | Rocket science