Today I spent the whole day doing hands-on work. I took all the parts I’d harvested from hours of desoldering, and learned how to identify and test all of them with a multimeter. Before I actually got started, I got to watch my boss test them and he gave me tips on what to look for. For example, a hydrolytic capacitor that is curved is probably bad, and most components are considered good if they test within 10% of their original value.

Anyway, after that I played around with different multimeter modes, how to read resistor colour codes, and organized all the parts by type. I even got a little plastic container and organized all my newly tested parts in that.

 

Make sure to check out the blog posts on identifying and testing different electronic components!