Toolbox: Parts storage (excerpt from Make: Electronics)
January 13th, 2010 | 
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In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.
In this installment of Toolbox, we excerpt a section from Charles Platt's Make: Electronics book. Throughout the book, there's a lot of really useful information on buying tools, supplies and materials, components, and on setting up a home electronics workshop. The material below is from Chapter 5, from the section on "Customizing Your Work Area." The bulk of it deals with parts storage technologies. As anyone who's gotten even half-serious about electronics knows, very quickly, you end up with a lot of tiny little parts that need to be organized in some sensible fashion, otherwise, working on a project amount to spending half your time frustratingly looking through your parts jumble for the components you need.
Excerpt from:
Customizing Your Work Area
Many hobby electronics books want you to go shopping for 2x4s and plywood, as if a workbench has to be custom-fabricated to satisfy strict criteria about size and shape. I find this puzzling. To me, the exact size and shape of a bench is not very important. I think the most important issue is storage. I want tools and parts to be easily accessible, whether they're tiny transistors or big spools of wire. I certainly don't want to go digging around on shelves that require me to get up and walk across the room.
This leads me to two conclusions:
1. You need storage above the workbench.
2. You need storage below the workbench.
Many DIY workbench projects allow little or no storage underneath. Or, they suggest open shelves, which will be vulnerable to dust. My minimum configuration would be a pair of two-drawer file cabinets with a slab of 3/4-inch plywood or a Formica-clad kitchen countertop placed across them. File cabinets are ideal for storing all kinds of objects, not just files. Of all the workbenches I've used, the one I liked best was an old-fashioned steel office desk--the kind of monster that dates back to the 1950s. They're difficult to move (because of their weight) and don't look beautiful, but you can buy them cheaply from used office furniture dealers, they're generous in size, they withstand abuse, and they last forever. The drawers are deep and usually slide in and out smoothly, like good file-cabinet drawers. Best of all, the desk has so much steel in it that you can use it to ground yourself before touching components that are sensitive to static electricity. If you use an antistatic
wrist strap, you can simply attach it to a sheet-metal screw that you drive into one corner of the desk.
What will you put in the deep drawers of your desk or file cabinets? Some paperwork may be useful, perhaps including the following documents:
• Product data sheets
• Parts catalogs
• Sketches and plans that you draw yourself
The remaining capacity of each drawer can be filled with plastic storage boxes. The boxes can contain tools that you don't use so often (such as a heat gun or a high-capacity soldering iron), and larger-sized components (such as loudspeakers, AC adapters, project boxes, and circuit boards). You should look for storage boxes that measure around 11" long, 8" wide, and 5" deep, with straight sides. Boxes that you can buy at Wal-Mart will be cheaper, but they often have tapering sides (which are not space-efficient).
Figure 5-3. Lids are sold separately for Akro-Grid boxes to keep the contents dust-free. The height of the box in Figure 5-2 allows three to be stacked in a typical file-cabinet drawer. The box shown here allows two to be stacked.
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