When you have a hobby like electronics, you quickly find yourself swamped with large numbers of small components which you have to carefully label and store. This goes especially for SMD components; not only will you loose them, but if you don’t keep them in a labelled container you’ll never know the part number of the component again. I needed a cheap, easy and quick way of storing my components, so I made a simple cabinet for them.

I have an abundance of small screw-cap containers, which originally held a yoghurt drink. They are about the right size to store most components and have a flat screw top where one can stick a label. I decided to label them with the same round Herma labels I use to label my beer. My inventory of components is kept in an Excel file, so I devised a way to use this XLS file to print the information about the components onto the Herma labels in an automated way.

To store the bottles I made a simple wooden cabinet, which hangs on my wall next to my regular Raco component cabinets. I made the cabinet the same height as the Raco cabinets so that they fit together. If I ever have some left-over paint I might paint it red to match.

The cabinet’s frame is 8mm plywood, in which I have cut slots to accept 4mm plywood divisions. My table saw slide made short work of this.

The width between the divisions is a millimetre less than the width of a bottle, this way they are slightly wedged in place and won’t slide down as I remove the bottle below.

My cabinet holds about 150 bottles of components. I am slowly filling it, but I’ll need to make another one to store all my components.

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