PCB Friday: Organization for Hackers, Engineers, and Electronics Aficionados

Those who have seen my personal work area (e.g. desk and office) wouldn't typically peg me as a neat person. In fact, at one former employer they had a picture of my desk up on the wall with the caption "bad example."

However, in certain aspects (such as parts and tools storage), do I strive to be organized. There is nothing worse than spending valuable time looking for widget X, only to just buy another one, then find it in place Y several weeks later... Okay, there are worse things, but it's still annoying.

So that's my motivation. If I have the proper chip/dev board for X, Y, and/or Z, I want to be able to find it at a moment's notice. In part, this probably stems from my former job as a manufacturing engineer, when I often had to search for a specific component that was keeping a machine down, losing a significant amount of money/minute for my employer... and stressing me out!

Sure, that's not happening to me now, but I really like being able to find stuff! So, how do I keep my parts organized?

Organization option 1: Storage cases, custom bins

I use a series of Harbor Freight cases to organize many of my parts, and a Brother P-touch label maker to put markings on the handles and individual bins. I also print and use these 3D-printed, subdivided bins to help me pack stuff more densely into the cases.

If you're literally and figuratively willing to buy into this bin system, the question then becomes what overall categories/labels should you use for your boxes? This needs to make sense, plus roughly even out the contents. This will be different for everyone, but below is what works for me.

Electronics case labels (categories – small Harbor Freight case unless otherwise noted):

• UNLABELED: random stuff (large case)
• SURFACE MOUNT: surface-mount components (large case)
• AUDIO: audio components
• ACCESSORY BOARDS: Arduino shields and the like
• SURFACE MOUNT: surface-mount components
• DEVBOARD - CHIP: Chips (e.g. ATtiny85), dev boards, Raspberry Pis
• RC CTRL - MISC: Servos, servo controllers, motors, random bits (non-HF case)
• SWITCH - BUTTON: switches, buttons, also potentiometers and encoders
• CONNECTORS: Jumper wires, header pins, etc
• LED - RESISTOR: LEDs and resistors
• UNLABELED: more random stuff (large case)
• POWER BATTERIES: power-related components, including batteries
• SENSOR - MOTOR: sensors, motors

Other case categories (hardware):

• M2.5 - M3: Metric hardware in 2.5 and 3mm diameter
• M5 - M6 - Extrusion: Metric hardware in 5 and 5mm diameter + extrusion (e.g. 2020) hardware
• BOLTS - NUTS: English standard hardware, somewhat organized and labeled
• SCREW - MISC: I inherited this case from my wife's grandfather, complete with an assortment of less organized bolts, nuts, washers, and other bits. While pseudo-random, this collection has come in quite handy from time to time.

Of course, my categories have to be adjusted occasionally (e.g. I've shifted from English toward metric hardware over the years), and there's still some ambiguity – e.g. is an audio connector a connector or audio? (It's audio.)

One neat thing about these cases is that you can get a preview of what's inside thanks to their semi-transparent tops. Also, keeping the latches down has (mostly) prevented major parts spills so far.

Organization option 2: Gridfinity for extreme modularity

I'm fairly happy with my organizational setup. However, if you want to go all-in on this pursuit, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Gridfinity, a rather all-encompassing open source organization system, explained in Zack Freedman's rather entertaining, if not-quite-G-rated, video below.

This setup is very cool, though at some point you have to address the question of are organizing to the point where it's harming your productivity? To be fair, Freedman does briefly consider this early on in the video, and also addresses the possibility of printing the wrong things and/or your workshop changing at around the 5:30 mark.

As cool as it looks, after dabbling with it a bit I stuck with my customized Harbor Freight case setup. If, however, you are willing to go all-in on a system (and print lots of stuff), then Gridfinity (or Gridfinity 2.0, which I just heard of) could be your new printing obsession.

Junk bin, discard, donate

When you start organizing, you should also consider the cost of keeping things around, and don't be afraid to discard or donate your unused items. Makerspaces and other such creative workshops may be happy to take them, and they can often collectively make better use of them than you would otherwise!

I've also found having an intermediate junk bin for inexpensive electronics and bits to be very helpful. Don't want to organize those resistors you just pulled off a breadboard? Throw them in the not-quite-trash bin! Reach in for the odd wire or component as convenient, and when the bin gets too high, organize and/or discard in one fell swoop.

Of course, organization, as illustrated by the picture below – that may or may not be my workshop – is a never-ending quest. I think the important thing is to find a system that works for you, that you can stick with over the long term, and to tidy up as you can!

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for reading my biweekly PCB Friday column! I'm looking forward to sharing more PCB-related knowledge and insights here, and I hope you'll follow along for the journey. You can find my more semi-technical musings at TechAdjacent.io, or email me at hi@jeremyscook.com if you have any suggestions!