I thought it was me

[pyoor_excuse]

I’m often a dozy cow. I’ll order the wrong thing because I’ll miss something blatant on the packaging, like it being the wrong size, or I’ll forget to check the shape, or whatever. I think I use up all my exacting caution at work, checking drugs or sutures, or what have you.

So this morning, when the envelope from RS components arrived and looked…thin. And when I opened it and found this:

My first thought was that I’d been a spectacularly dozy cow. 5 small surface mount components stared back at me, and the complete lack of a pick-and-place machine, or indeed a device for them to live in wandered around my consciousness, as I debated what to do. I thought I’d just have to chalk it up to my usual insanity and buy some of the right components.

But I remembered looking at it. While I wanted an axial capacitor, I remember thinking that since the capacitors just hang in space anyway, so long as I insulate the legs it doesn’t hugely matter if it’s a radial one instead… I remember noting the size, and that 2cm was okay to fit into the space…

So I went back, looked at the site and found this:

…rang RS, and they’re trying to sort out (very nicely) what’s happened, and will ring me later before sending me the right component. Let’s hope that the old electrolytic in the valve radio hangs on to life until then…

Originally published at Kates Journal. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

You've done better with RS than I did with CPC. I'm forever having this sort of problem, as their website sees illustrations as just a vague hint as to the type of product, not a reliable guide.

Mind you, 22uF @ 350V, and they're _that_ small? Quite impressive.

I need some JST connectors - one of the families of little plastic multipoles. I still don't know if I need plugs/sockets, male/female, I don't want pins (per contact), but I do want a plastic housing that fits inside the other plastic housing (per connector). Having twice failed to order the right thing by looking at the pictures, I've now ordered a set of each part number for the whole range!

I've also given up on buying a black XLR connector, despite the pictures ("silver is the new black", it seems), and ended up buying a foot-long cable and de-soldering.

[pyoor_excuse]

Well, I don't know if they are even that. There's no indication on the actual ribbon as to what they are, and that part number directs you to a through-hole capacitor, so... they're just 5 mystery components to me!

Aye, buying connectors seems to be an entertaining nightmare, and yes, people seem to think 'black' refers to any colour that's not distinctively red, white, or yellow on connectors. I got quite pissed off when some company's shot of their lead (not marked as illustrative only) turned out to have crap, cheap moulded plastic connectors when I'd wanted decent quality metal ones (which is what was in the photo). Thankfully I had the spare bits to fix the cable, but... it's not the point. :-/