I'm looking to change the way I store my PCBs, and am considering buying literature mailers for that purpose. Here is a link to a website with a picture of a literature mailer: http://www.uline.com/BL_1404/Literature ... e-Tab-Lock
Utilizing a variety of sizes, these should provide compact, secure, and transportable storage for a number of form factors. Unfortunately, the sites I've found selling these boxes have a minimum order much higher than I require.
Does anyone have any suggestions for another way to store PCBs?
Is anyone interested in splitting an order for small, medium, and large boxes?
Sorry if this should be in the trading station area....
I went the U-Line route. Sure, I have a crap-ton of extra boxes, but you can use them for anything (shipping, dead animals, chocolates, ...). The price per unit wasn't terrible even if I were to throw away the extras. Granted I wasn't getting 50 pc. minimum units, more like 25 or less.
I went with various sizes. Some people try and go for the uniform approach, but the space wasted on smaller PCBs is obscene.
-ud
I find the main problem with PCB storage is wasted space within the boxes (which can make the difference between putting sixteen or a dozen PCBs in a larger container). The fold-down tab is nice but I find I've already got them stored somewhere else so open ends seem fine, like Priority Mail boxes (and if you want to sell a PCB, just get some bubble wrap, and you can seal it up and send it off).
Pretty much all of the box solutions take up more space than is necessary. Sure, they can look reasonably nice on shelves but I've never been a huge fan of it.
But I've also been looking into boxes like these, for the more valuable boards that I'm unlikely to sell any time soon: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/270965020808
The problem with boxes is as said before, they take a huge amount of space.
If you just have a few pcb's then this is not a big problem...but when they start to count up...no way of doing this anymore.
I use the box method but instead of buying the ones from Uline ,
I get some boxes from staples and use anti - static bags on all my pcbs.
It has worked out really well.
Old pic, I now have two of these home depot storage shelves and they are both full. So yes, boxes take more room, but we have earthquakes here, and I can't risk them all falling on the floor and getting damaged if they were not in boxes. BTW: I got all these boxes for free when my company upgraded their phone system. Now I raid the PC Lab for empty laptop boxes whenever new shipments come in. They think I'm nuts.
I've had this happen to me at work too. I saw a beautiful box in the trash and went "oh, what a lovely box" and promptly picked it up as I was leaving for the day. People gave me weird looks and actually asked me why I took it.
Indeed, boxes take up a lot of space. It has been my storage method so far though.
I use anti static bags and foam inside. They are the perfect size, no waste, with CPS-II and even full CPS-III sets or Naomi systems, but they do waste a lot of space with many boards. There's the advantage of extra protection, but I have been thinking about figuring out a way to cut these to half their "height" for most PCBs...
I've had to store around 12 or more PCBs/Boxes in a different room because of these size issues.
I have a bunch of 18"x12"x2" boxes that I got from an accounting firm that custom ordered folders for tax season. They usually give me like 20 or so every year. 90% of the PCBs I have fit in them nicely, along with the manual for them and any special adapters/cables required to make that PCB shine in my new Astro (Like a Stereo adapter for the Konami GXes)
Works well, they stack nicely, and they're bright white on the outside so its easy to see whats written on them with pencil, so you can erase it and relabel.
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