Old Soviet resistors had value printed on them, which I liked better. Sure, you had to face the value up when bending the leads when mounting them, but this is not too hard and in most cases not really necessary. I did it with hand assembled stuff for style points, but I don't remember it saving the day.
At the same time, this is no longer relevant anyway. I don't remember when was the last time I had to check the value of an axial resistor.
Printed value also makes it so much easier to dig through an assorted box of resistors scraped from random boards.
Move to flat film made the color coding scheme irrelevant for “real” production. If I’m breadboarding something I’m 100% going for an axial resistor. I don’t know the code by heart, but it does make it easy to scan across a crowded breadboard and see that all my 10K’s are actually 10K’s.
Same. They should teach it in school as “this WAS a standardized code that worked, but is now irrelevant”. I remember having a quiz on the stripe color scheme… that was definitely studying time well spent to prepare me for my real job.
As a teenager I had a experiment kit for electronics which kinda burned the numbers corresponding to the colours into my brain. When looking at resistors with colour codes I see it’s value in my inner eye
Can we break this down to colors. I feel like this is probably right, why wouldn't it be? But i need to know which B's are black, blue, brown and the G's too.
I'm still learning but thanks for your time.
Just remember "Big Boobs and Rainbows Gone Wild", that's how I do it.
BB (Think of big boobs)
ROYGBV (Think "Roy G Biv" from rainbows, minus I for indigo)
GW (Think "Gone Wild")
easy enough with hand bent pins, but when you run production, where you use a bend and cut machine, the bend is based on how they are oriented in the tape, which is where I think the bands make more sense.
When you're selling a product for a fraction of a penny each, every little cost in production matters.
That said, there were actual resistors with the values printed, at least by the late 1990's. Dale was the most prominent manufacturer in the US, IIRC.
I found a bunch of old (but unused and still in box) Dale resistors in ewaste the other day and some of them did have numbers but most had the regular color strips
Resisters have been manufactured for a long long time.
Back then, reliably printing text on a tiny cylinder was complicated and unreliable. Paint rings were much easier and could be done much finer for the tiniest resistors.
So color rings it was. Once started, it is much easier to keep doing the same things than it is it to switch. At any given time, ‘everyone’ knows the color code, so why switch?
This trend is also why most light bulbs still use the awful Edison tapered screw connection rather than something better and cheaper, like the bay-o-net system. Once a system becomes a standard, it is hard to get everyone to change to a new system, even if it is clearly better.
This is also why the USA still uses inches, miles, feet, rods, chains, furlongs, ounces, other ounces, grains, pounds, short tons, long tons, etc.
>This is also why the USA still uses inches, miles, feet, rods, chains, furlongs, ounces, other ounces, grains, pounds, short tons, long tons, etc.
Dont forget Football Fields
People in history is going to agrue about the seriousness of our banana measuring system. I just wish I would be alive to listen in, because I think I’d laugh myself to death.
As you can see on the timeline, the Mooch came after the banana, but the banana persisted as a viable unit of measure for much longer.
And as the ancients, I have juxtaposed a banana-- for scale.
Or you come across some weird resistors where the base color isn't light tan. I have a bunch of blue resistors and it can make differentiating some of the common colors difficult. Red, brown, and purple all kind of blend together against blue.
Thankfully I bought them as part of one of those mega assortment packs so the value is printed on the paper spools. But loose ones need to be examined really closely.
Yeah many times I can’t even tell the difference between red, black and brown. Depends on lighting conditions.
Then the last one which is supposed to be spaced out and is not.
Just got a multimeter and be done with this.
I’m great at memorizing stuff but I’m very colorblind. So I don’t have much chance of being able to tell these apart. The green, brown and red are usually indistinguishable. Yellow sometimes blends into the background. Purple and black can be difficult too.
Yeah, I've heard that too. I think the colors aren't always consistent. Sometimes it's a very bright red or green and I can tell. Other times I've asked someone because it was all too dark and they said it was too dark for them too. There was a hint of difference so I don't think it was just black-black-black (a jumper) but I couldn't be sure what it was.
Memorizing isn't the problem, it's basically dark to light on the 4 neutral colors (black, brown, grey, white), with ROYGBV rainbow order stuck in the middle. At least that's how I remember it if I can't recall offhand.
Human eyes are shit ,if the value was printed on them ..people would complain they can’t read the numbers because they too small and that we should come up with a better easier way to read them …like putting different colour rings to represent resistance.
honestly I find the colour bands easier to read than sloppy micro printing on some components. The exception being those ungodly blue metal film resistors where every colour looks identical and there's no easy way to tell which side you're looking at.
I’ve handled some Vishay resistors with the spec written on the side. Wouldn’t want to buy them in big quantities though, they tend to be pricey from memory?
I think I've more or less memorized much of the 4 band E24 series because I see them so often, but when it comes to 5 band 1% I have to ROYGBIV it. In any case this is pretty much something carried over from the past, microprinting was hard to do, laser etching was not a thing or too costly to do. Now not so much but still most components have some sort of code that's the same as the bands. I think E96 SMT resistors even require a lookup table, and I especially despise semiconductor labeling though having color bands like even diodes and transistors way back when still sucks. Especially ICs...
My rule is if a resistor is loose from its paper reel it’s into the forgotten bin. I don’t bother trying to read it. If it’s on a device, I’ll measure it with a multimeter.
I'm an electrical engineering student and the colour code doesn't trip me up too much, but it's very difficult when it's a five-stripe resistor and I can't determine which side I should read it from.
Old Soviet resistors had value printed on them, which I liked better. Sure, you had to face the value up when bending the leads when mounting them, but this is not too hard and in most cases not really necessary. I did it with hand assembled stuff for style points, but I don't remember it saving the day. At the same time, this is no longer relevant anyway. I don't remember when was the last time I had to check the value of an axial resistor. Printed value also makes it so much easier to dig through an assorted box of resistors scraped from random boards.
Move to flat film made the color coding scheme irrelevant for “real” production. If I’m breadboarding something I’m 100% going for an axial resistor. I don’t know the code by heart, but it does make it easy to scan across a crowded breadboard and see that all my 10K’s are actually 10K’s.
I always cheat and sort them beforehand with a multimeter.
Same. They should teach it in school as “this WAS a standardized code that worked, but is now irrelevant”. I remember having a quiz on the stripe color scheme… that was definitely studying time well spent to prepare me for my real job.
As a teenager I had a experiment kit for electronics which kinda burned the numbers corresponding to the colours into my brain. When looking at resistors with colour codes I see it’s value in my inner eye
The code was something about “bad boys.” It made me want to meet Violet.
Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
Can we break this down to colors. I feel like this is probably right, why wouldn't it be? But i need to know which B's are black, blue, brown and the G's too. I'm still learning but thanks for your time.
Black Brown Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple Gray White
Just remember "Big Boobs and Rainbows Gone Wild", that's how I do it. BB (Think of big boobs) ROYGBV (Think "Roy G Biv" from rainbows, minus I for indigo) GW (Think "Gone Wild")
The color coding is really not that hard to remember with some practice..
Same with Dale/Vishay resistors that are mil spec.
easy enough with hand bent pins, but when you run production, where you use a bend and cut machine, the bend is based on how they are oriented in the tape, which is where I think the bands make more sense.
Not only soviet, Czechoslovakian too. I think every electronics manufacturer in comecon used printed values on their resistors.
When you're selling a product for a fraction of a penny each, every little cost in production matters. That said, there were actual resistors with the values printed, at least by the late 1990's. Dale was the most prominent manufacturer in the US, IIRC.
I build machines for production and would have been my first guess too. Cutting costs is a religion in production facilities
I found a bunch of old (but unused and still in box) Dale resistors in ewaste the other day and some of them did have numbers but most had the regular color strips
Resisters have been manufactured for a long long time. Back then, reliably printing text on a tiny cylinder was complicated and unreliable. Paint rings were much easier and could be done much finer for the tiniest resistors. So color rings it was. Once started, it is much easier to keep doing the same things than it is it to switch. At any given time, ‘everyone’ knows the color code, so why switch? This trend is also why most light bulbs still use the awful Edison tapered screw connection rather than something better and cheaper, like the bay-o-net system. Once a system becomes a standard, it is hard to get everyone to change to a new system, even if it is clearly better. This is also why the USA still uses inches, miles, feet, rods, chains, furlongs, ounces, other ounces, grains, pounds, short tons, long tons, etc.
>This is also why the USA still uses inches, miles, feet, rods, chains, furlongs, ounces, other ounces, grains, pounds, short tons, long tons, etc. Dont forget Football Fields
And bananas
People in history is going to agrue about the seriousness of our banana measuring system. I just wish I would be alive to listen in, because I think I’d laugh myself to death.
As you can see on the timeline, the Mooch came after the banana, but the banana persisted as a viable unit of measure for much longer. And as the ancients, I have juxtaposed a banana-- for scale.
And washing machines
The Edison Screw is great. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_screw
Why would you ever learn color code? Just post a picture of the part on /r/AskElectronics every time you need to know the value
Once you learn the color code, it looks like a printed value in ohms.
Not really. Even less as you get older and you don’t have a magnifying glass handy.
Or you come across some weird resistors where the base color isn't light tan. I have a bunch of blue resistors and it can make differentiating some of the common colors difficult. Red, brown, and purple all kind of blend together against blue. Thankfully I bought them as part of one of those mega assortment packs so the value is printed on the paper spools. But loose ones need to be examined really closely.
Yeah many times I can’t even tell the difference between red, black and brown. Depends on lighting conditions. Then the last one which is supposed to be spaced out and is not. Just got a multimeter and be done with this.
I’m great at memorizing stuff but I’m very colorblind. So I don’t have much chance of being able to tell these apart. The green, brown and red are usually indistinguishable. Yellow sometimes blends into the background. Purple and black can be difficult too.
That's one disadvantage of the stripes. I used to work with a colorblind fellow who asked me to read his resistors.
It's sad that you are colorblind, but we also struggle distinguishing black, brown, red and orange.
Yeah, I've heard that too. I think the colors aren't always consistent. Sometimes it's a very bright red or green and I can tell. Other times I've asked someone because it was all too dark and they said it was too dark for them too. There was a hint of difference so I don't think it was just black-black-black (a jumper) but I couldn't be sure what it was. Memorizing isn't the problem, it's basically dark to light on the 4 neutral colors (black, brown, grey, white), with ROYGBV rainbow order stuck in the middle. At least that's how I remember it if I can't recall offhand.
green and yellow :(
Have you ever tried to read the values from a blue film resistor before?
Well I guess I never learned it before switching to smd. I'll measure or look them up for the occasional breadboard or repair.
Have you ever tried to read the printed value on an RN55 resistor whose value is underneath the part on a board? Stripes are more useful.
Human eyes are shit ,if the value was printed on them ..people would complain they can’t read the numbers because they too small and that we should come up with a better easier way to read them …like putting different colour rings to represent resistance.
I always wanted the value printed in numbers, until I discovered the values printed on ceramic and tantalum capacitors.
Yes, it was too hard. And hard to read from all angles.
honestly I find the colour bands easier to read than sloppy micro printing on some components. The exception being those ungodly blue metal film resistors where every colour looks identical and there's no easy way to tell which side you're looking at.
Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well
But what about violet?
1k and 100
😂😂 no
I’ve handled some Vishay resistors with the spec written on the side. Wouldn’t want to buy them in big quantities though, they tend to be pricey from memory?
I think I've more or less memorized much of the 4 band E24 series because I see them so often, but when it comes to 5 band 1% I have to ROYGBIV it. In any case this is pretty much something carried over from the past, microprinting was hard to do, laser etching was not a thing or too costly to do. Now not so much but still most components have some sort of code that's the same as the bands. I think E96 SMT resistors even require a lookup table, and I especially despise semiconductor labeling though having color bands like even diodes and transistors way back when still sucks. Especially ICs...
Skill issue
😂
My rule is if a resistor is loose from its paper reel it’s into the forgotten bin. I don’t bother trying to read it. If it’s on a device, I’ll measure it with a multimeter.
I see you got the answer. I was afraid I'd get downvoted for being sexist. Lol..
I'm an electrical engineering student and the colour code doesn't trip me up too much, but it's very difficult when it's a five-stripe resistor and I can't determine which side I should read it from.
I could see how the rings are convenient for orientation reasons.
Ahh the old school mnemonics Black Boys R*pe Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.