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Beginners / Re: Is it safe to store CMOS devices in the AideTek ESD Boxes
« Last post by shabaz on Today at 04:59:27 pm »It may get unscalable when everything is stored in individual small compartments. Personally, I leave ICs in their original packaging, and just write with a permanent marker in case the labels fade, and place them all into a box (over time, you could have a separate box per project or separate boxes for (say) analog ICs, discrete semi, digital. Some boxes are long and about the right size to keep all the packets tidy-ish if you prefer that. For anything in tubes, personally, I use a small waste bin (well, slightly nicer than a typical waste bin! It is woven to look not so ugly) and place them all in there (in their original packaging again).
For general practicality while experimenting (i.e., not production), I do have little conductive plastic pots with lids in a couple of small shallow tray-like boxes with lids. These are useful for your most popular devices, e.g. low-power (SOT-23 or similar) BJTs, MOSFETs, diodes, jellybean stuff etc, so you don't need to keep trawling through large boxes for those. But possibly it's still a bit excessive, a simpler option would be to keep a small box of popular parts in their original packaging. Whatever you feel is more practical for you. You can also place conductive foam in ESD-safe tray-like boxes if you have popular through-hole parts.
In your case, since it is a specific lab kit, you may wish to do something different for even more practicality perhaps, but I'm not sure there's any single optimal way. One reasonably practical way that I saw was the Digilent component kits. They use a cheap (non-ESD-safe) clear transparent plastic box with dividers, and for the ICs, they shoved them in foam and inserted them into compartments. Obviously, this is not good for production use, as there is still a risk of damage, but for learning/experimentation, I think it's a fairly reasonable solution to obtain a large box with many compartments and a large sheet of conductive foam and cut it up. If your lab kit is really massive, perhaps it could be split up into two or three categories, each in its own large box.
For general practicality while experimenting (i.e., not production), I do have little conductive plastic pots with lids in a couple of small shallow tray-like boxes with lids. These are useful for your most popular devices, e.g. low-power (SOT-23 or similar) BJTs, MOSFETs, diodes, jellybean stuff etc, so you don't need to keep trawling through large boxes for those. But possibly it's still a bit excessive, a simpler option would be to keep a small box of popular parts in their original packaging. Whatever you feel is more practical for you. You can also place conductive foam in ESD-safe tray-like boxes if you have popular through-hole parts.
In your case, since it is a specific lab kit, you may wish to do something different for even more practicality perhaps, but I'm not sure there's any single optimal way. One reasonably practical way that I saw was the Digilent component kits. They use a cheap (non-ESD-safe) clear transparent plastic box with dividers, and for the ICs, they shoved them in foam and inserted them into compartments. Obviously, this is not good for production use, as there is still a risk of damage, but for learning/experimentation, I think it's a fairly reasonable solution to obtain a large box with many compartments and a large sheet of conductive foam and cut it up. If your lab kit is really massive, perhaps it could be split up into two or three categories, each in its own large box.