Resistor colours

[Cursitor Doom]

Anyone else find it bizarre and inexplicable when resistor
manufacturers use coloured bodies for their resitors? The subsequent
coded bands become *far* more difficult to read.

[peterw...@gmail.com]

Generally, there is a reason for those colors. The Internet is your friend in figuring out why.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[John Robertson]

And some of us (7-10% male, <1% female) are red/green colour challenged,
so green and brown can look the same at the best of times... I use an
ohmmeter to verify as I can't trust my colour vision.

John :-#)#

[Fox's Mercantile]

Don't get out much do you?
Allen Bradly, and most other carbon composition resistor
manufacturers used a brown composition body.
When film resistors started to become popular, they had
white bodies.
The only other color I've seen is a dull red, Usually on 2%
resistors.

Of course, wire wound resistors had colors all over the
map. But then they had the values printed on them. No color
code.


--
"I am a river to my people."
Jeff-1.0
WA6FWi
http:foxsmercantile.com

[bilou]

On 11/12/2019 03:07, Fox's Mercantile wrote:
>
> Allen Bradly, and most other carbon composition resistor
> manufacturers used a brown composition body.
> When film resistors started to become popular, they had
> white bodies.
> The only other color I've seen is a dull red, Usually on 2%
> resistors.
>
> Of course, wire wound resistors had colors all over the
> map. But then they had the values printed on them. No color
> code.
>

Black color is the right choice for anything expected to
dissipate energy.
Integrated circuits is a good example.
smc components another.

[tabb...@gmail.com]

By the time it's hot enough for that to matter it's already toast. The other colours are close to black in IR performance.


NT

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 14:30:10 -0800, John Robertson <sp...@flippers.com>
wrote:

My colour vision works OK but I still check resistance with a meter.

Steve

--
http://www.npsnn.com

[peterw...@gmail.com]

Mpfff....

Resistor body colors are indicative of their composition, nature, tolerance, and generally follow convention.

https://makezine.com/2013/04/01/component-of-the-month-resistors/

It is not random.

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <ljo1vetcm9g71bikp...@4ax.com>,
st...@easynn.com says...

>
> My colour vision works OK but I still check resistance with a meter.
>
>
>

My vision is fine also,but like you I still check the older resistors.
I have many new carbon resistors that are over 40 years old. Some are
very close in value and some are out of the 10% range they are suppose
to be. Some are 1 and 2 watt Allen Bradely and they are in packs of
about 25. Out of that pack I may find one or two that are outside the
10% range. Some not much , some are around 30% off. Hard to believe
that some could change so much while never used and only a few inches
away in the same package.

[tabb...@gmail.com]

Think about the construction, I'm not surprised the high R ones tend to drift high


NT

[John Robertson]

And if you are colour blind or deficient it is not information that we
can see...

Not picking a fight (I like your posts), just saying colour doesn't work
for all of us here!

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the USENET newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd.
MOVED to #7 - 3979 Marine Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5J 5E3
(604)872-5757 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <802a7db3-cf40-4a1f...@googlegroups.com>,
tabb...@gmail.com says...

>
> Think about the construction, I'm not surprised the high R ones tend to drift high
>
>
>
>

I have found some in the 470 ohm and a few in the 100 and under ohm
range have changed values more than the 10% they are rated for.
Those were new ones in the 25 pack.

They were checked with a Fluke 87 that had been sent out about 6 months
before to a lab that verified it to the NIST to be in caliberation.

[Trevor Wilson]

**The very first test I had to pass, before entering the electronics
biz, was a colour blind test.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <h5d73n...@mid.individual.net>, tre...@rageaudio.com.au
says...

>
>
> **The very first test I had to pass, before entering the electronics
> biz, was a colour blind test.
>
>
>

As most electronics have now gone to the SMD the color code is not worth
too much.

Most of the SMD resistors I have seen are marked as to resistance.
However the SMD capacitors have no markings at all. Sort of backwards to
me. Almost everyone will have a meter that can measure resistance, but
maybe not the capacitors at hand.

[Trevor Wilson]

**True enough now. I started in 1971. Digital meters were the realm of
seriously cashed laboratories only. Even then, NIXIE tubes ruled.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

[Michael Terrell]

The first one that I saw was Non Linear Systems, in the late '60s. It had just been purchased by the local steel mill for their research center. One of their engineers brought it to our high school Electronics class to show it to us. It used an electro mechanical display that was slow to update. I wasn't impressed.

https://stevenjohnson.com/nls/index.htm is an example.

[John Robertson]

Sounds like telephone steppers running the display tubes - one stepper
per tube...

The same sort of display and stepper was used in some 1960s arcade games
- Nutting's COMPUTER QUIZ was one of them. Here is a video I did of that
machine from a year or two ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr98ASLdbZQ

I didn't go into the scoring with the Nixie tubes and the telephone
steppers in that video, should do that if I make another...

[Trevor Wilson]

**Cool. I learned my craft as a trainee with an Aussie quasi-government
agency called The Overseas Telecomunications Commission. They were
responsible for all communications in and out of Australia. That
included satellite, cable and, HF radio They had so many cool toys,
including:

* An entire floor dedicated to a large mainframe. Which included a 2
Metre long computer drum drive.
* The very first ink jet printer I had ever seen (1972-ish). As I
recall, the ink was accelerated to the paper via a 2.5kV potential
difference. The printer was VERY slow and the print quality was
appalling. Cost over 2.5 Grand, if I recall.
* Huge page printers, churning out print at quite respectable speeds.
* A thing called T.A.S.I. Time Allocation, Speech Interpolation.
Multiple racks of tubed equipment, which examined the incoming and
outgoing voice comms and shuffled bits of voice into quiet parts of
different conversations. Bandwidth of the cable was doubled. Astonishing
technology.
* A HUGE 2.5kV power supply for the tube cable repeaters between Sydney
and New Zealand. VERY reliable tubes were chosen (obviously, as repair
was expensive).
* A massive (600mm X 600mm X 600mm frequency counter, using tubes and
NIXIE tubes as readouts. Something like 10 digits.
* A huge battery room, full of Pyrex™ glass lead/acid batteries. The
room also had four, 2 Metre high CO2 cylinders and a 2 Tonne fire door.
We were told that, if there was a fire, run like Hell and, if the door
closed, climb onto the Diesel generator (about 2 Metres high) and hope
the CO2 doesn't suffocate us. Prolly and urban myth to scare trainees.



--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

[peterw...@gmail.com]

No fight perceived. Just attempting to point out to the OP and other speculators that these colors are not by accident, and in some cases convey critical information, such as fusible and/or flameproof resistors, not to be replaced with standard types.

In any case, enjoy your holidays!

[Michael Terrell]

I used the 'White Alice Network', back in the early '70s. It was built during WW-II as the first, Over the Horizon, Microwave telephone system to connect the various military bases in Alaska. It used huge dishes, and the refraction of mountain peaks to get their signals over the various mountains. The audio was remarkably clear, for telephone service, considering it was almost 30 years old. Our telephone, teletype and radio network feeds were delivered by this system. A lot of people died, building it but it made more sense than trying to build thousands of miles of lead covered aerial cable, or even worse, burying it in a region that varied from below -40F, to +80F during the year. The last traces of the old sites are mostly gone now, but there are websites dedicated to its history. It took dedicated and rugged engineers and technicians to build and maintain a huge system, like this.

I used it from what had been 'Delta Field' in WW-II. It was one of the major transfer sites for the Lend-Lease program, where Russian pilots picked American built aircraft and weapons to fight Germany from the Russian Front. The building I worked at had been the pilot's mess hall, barracks and the original boiler plant for the airfield. Considering the age and severe weather conditions, I don't recall a time that it ever gave us problems, other that high audio loss on dedicated audio feeds. It was never designed to handle a Network radio feed, and it was around -20dB depending on the time of year. That wasn't unexpected, on 30 year old Arial lead cable. I had a spare mag phone preamp on hand, so I added it to the feed, to bring it up to the required level. The station was AM, and played mostly Rock, so no one complained about the bad equalization. :)

Prior to that modification, it was a sight to watch the DJ switch from Network to local feed. The levels had to be reset at three points, in just a couple seconds, and they were all on different racks. They loved just flipping a switch, instead.

[Michael Terrell]

On Thursday, December 12, 2019 at 6:44:33 AM UTC-5, pf...@aol.com wrote:
> No fight perceived. Just attempting to point out to the OP and other speculators that these colors are not by accident, and in some cases convey critical information, such as fusible and/or flameproof resistors, not to be replaced with standard types.

Peter, Ii can remember when those Flameproof resistors first went into use. Some consumer equipment had notices to use them for repairs, instead of the Carbon Comp. Others had warnings to only replace them with Flameproof, but as usual most of the hacks ignored the OEMs, because the resistors cost more, and weren't as well stocked by the wholesalers. These were the same losers who refused to properly hand MOSFETs and static sensitive ICs. I got tired of hearing, 'If they can't make good parts, let them go out of business.' If it were up to them TVs would still be all tube.

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

On Thu, 12 Dec 2019 04:59:11 -0800 (PST), Michael Terrell
<terrell....@gmail.com> wrote:

>'If they can't make good parts, let them go out of business.'

That's what my first company was often told. The "power" resistors
were white with the value printed on them in black. After some
exchange of messages I discovered that of our main customer wanted
green rather than white. We started encapsulating the resistors in a
ceramic that was green. Then we got complaints that black writing on
green was difficult to read. So far as I know the company is now using
imported components!

Steve

--
http://www.npsnn.com

[Michael Terrell]

On Thursday, December 12, 2019 at 9:14:21 AM UTC-5, Stephen Wolstenholme wrote:

>
> On Thu, 12 Dec 2019 04:59:11 -0800 (PST), Michael Terrell wrote:
>
> >'If they can't make good parts, let them go out of business.'
>
> That's what my first company was often told. The "power" resistors
> were white with the value printed on them in black. After some
> exchange of messages I discovered that of our main customer wanted
> green rather than white. We started encapsulating the resistors in a
> ceramic that was green. Then we got complaints that black writing on
> green was difficult to read. So far as I know the company is now using
> imported components!

Some want odd combinations as a cheap trademark, or to make it impossible to repair something without leaving any evidence. They could have dyed the bare white ceramic any color they wanted, or do like Western Electric did, and manufacture their own.

Many US suppliers are gone, because their customers didn't want to pay for quality. Sprague was one of them. OEMs could get parts that barely lasted through the warranty for half what a long life US made capacitor cost when they closed their plant near Orlando. Now, it is a division of Vishay along with other well known American brand names.

BTW, I hate light green signs with white printed text. Over time, the green fades, and the white discolors or is covered by mold that grows on the paint.

[tabb...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, 11 December 2019 20:45:20 UTC, Ralph Mowery wrote:
> In article <802a7db3-cf40-4a1f...@googlegroups.com>,
> tabbypurr says...

> >
> > Think about the construction, I'm not surprised the high R ones tend to drift high
> >
>
> I have found some in the 470 ohm and a few in the 100 and under ohm
> range have changed values more than the 10% they are rated for.
> Those were new ones in the 25 pack.
>
> They were checked with a Fluke 87 that had been sent out about 6 months
> before to a lab that verified it to the NIST to be in caliberation.

Yes, comp are known for drifting & sometimes going noisy. The high R values are much worse for drifting upward, since the internal contact points between grains are both smaller & fewer.


NT

[whit3rd]

On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 1:58:19 PM UTC-8, Trevor Wilson wrote:
> On 11/12/2019 9:30 am, John Robertson wrote:
> > On 2019/12/10 1:55 p.m., Cursitor Doom wrote:
> >> Anyone else find it bizarre and inexplicable when resistor
> >> manufacturers use coloured bodies for their resitors? The subsequent
> >> coded bands become *far* more difficult to read.

> > And some of us (7-10% male, <1% female) are red/green colour challenged,

> **The very first test I had to pass, before entering the electronics
> biz, was a colour blind test.

There's hope for the ten percent, though: cellphones can scan the codes for ya.

<https://play.google.com/store/search?q=resistor%20color%20code%20scanner&c=apps>

[tabb...@gmail.com]

... at the price of malware.

[Cursitor Doom]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 20:07:28 -0600, Fox's Mercantile <jda...@att.net>
wrote:

>On 12/10/19 3:55 PM, Cursitor Doom wrote:
>> Anyone else find it bizarre and inexplicable when resistor
>> manufacturers use coloured bodies for their resitors? The
>> subsequent coded bands become *far* more difficult to read.
>>
>
>Don't get out much do you?
>Allen Bradly, and most other carbon composition resistor
>manufacturers used a brown composition body.
>When film resistors started to become popular, they had
>white bodies.
>The only other color I've seen is a dull red, Usually on 2%
>resistors.

I have two assortments of several thousand through-holes I bought
recently from Farnell (never again-terrible service) and Conrad.
Farnell's were bright blue; Conrad's dark green(!) Both extremely
difficult to read (and I don't have any form of colour-blindness).
IME, white-bodied resistors constitute a very small minority.
--

"When constituencies are small their elected representatives must concern themselves with
the local interests of their constituents. When political representatives are distant and
faceless, on the other hand, and represent vast numbers of unknown constituents, they
represent not their constituents, but special interest groups whose lobbyists are numerous
and ever present. Typically in Europe a technocrat is an ex-politician or a civil servant.
He is unelected, virtually impossible to dislodge during his term of employment and has
been granted extensive executive and even legislative power without popular mandate and
without being directly answerable to the people whose interests he falsely purports to
represent."

- Sir James Goldsmith (Member of the European Parliament) 1933 - 1997

[bruce2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 5:18:43 AM UTC-5, bilou wrote:
> On 11/12/2019 03:07, Fox's Mercantile wrote:
> >
> > Allen Bradly, and most other carbon composition resistor
> > manufacturers used a brown composition body.
> > When film resistors started to become popular, they had
> > white bodies.
> > The only other color I've seen is a dull red, Usually on 2%
> > resistors.
> >
> > Of course, wire wound resistors had colors all over the
> > map. But then they had the values printed on them. No color
> > code.
> >
> Black color is the right choice for anything expected to
> dissipate energy.

Anything? Even 'A'phase?

[Lucifer]

On Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:00:54 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 1:58:19 PM UTC-8, Trevor Wilson wrote:
>> On 11/12/2019 9:30 am, John Robertson wrote:
>> > On 2019/12/10 1:55 p.m., Cursitor Doom wrote:
>> >> Anyone else find it bizarre and inexplicable when resistor
>> >> manufacturers use coloured bodies for their resitors? The subsequent
>> >> coded bands become *far* more difficult to read.
>
>> > And some of us (7-10% male, <1% female) are red/green colour challenged,

I am but I still got into Telstra.