Electronic parts

Lately I've been doing a lot of electronics repair. It's kind of a fun little hobby. Say your flat-panel computer monitor dies on you. You could throw it away, or for about $4 and 5 minutes of time you can repair it. Of course, you need to know how and what to repair, and I'm not really going to cover that here. The other thing you need is replacement parts, which is what I wanted to talk about today.

Say you need a diode, capacitor, resistor, etc. to repair an item. You could go down to your local Radio Shack or other electronics supply shop, but I would recommend against it. First, these places have a very limited supply, and second if you buy online you can get higher quality components. Also, the prices online are cheaper, although when you add in shipping the final cost will be about the same.

I recommend digikey.com. There are other sites, but digikey is my preferred supplier. Let's say you're looking for a 680 uF 16 volt capacitor (like this):

Knowing how to find this on digikey's site can be overwhelming the first time you try it.

1. Enter "capacitor" in the search box on digikey's site and hit enter.
   
2. The next screen shows all the different type of capactitors (e.g. ceramic, tantalum, etc.). In this case we're looking for "aluminum" so click on that. (BTW: you just need to learn that aluminum is another name for standard electrolytic capacitors.)
   
3. On the next screen, you need to filter down the selection. Under capacitance select "680uF." Under voltage select "16V." Under mounting type select "through hole." Finally check "in stock" and click Apply Filters.
   
4. This filtered it down to 17 choices. From here you can find the one you want, or further filter using manufacture, dimensions, etc.
   

Depending on which one you select, the capacitor is only .40 - .75 plus shipping (which is cheap for small orders). Once you learn to navigate digikey's site they have some really cool stuff such as thousands of LEDs of ever shape and color. If you're into electronics repair, hobby kit building, RC planes/cars, etc. give digikey a look, they are very useful.