Why blue resistors?

No clue as to the *real* answer, huh?

--
blu*goddess.of.groundhogs*juju
blu 3=3
master of irrelevance
Lits Slut#5
Gutter Chix0r #2
Cancel my subscription to the resurrection.
-Jim Morrison http://blu05.port5.com/

 

Can anyone offer a sensible reason why 1% resistors are typically
blue? Cheaper dye maybe?

Everyone I know complains about reading the muddy colors. They drive
me crazy.

Electronics is usually a bastion of rationality. Who is responsible
for this turd of a policy?

Harold K.

 

It is a part of an implicit ad: the resistors are true blue!

 

It varies from brand to brand.

There are british versions that are on a deeper than sky blue base.

Why are you a turd of an electronics person?

 

"Harold kemp"

** Blue looks cool - plus is distinctive.

** Err - what has that got to do with pale blue under colour ??

** You must be kidding !!!!!!!!

** So what body colour is your ideal ??

And why?

BTW

Maybe you have marginal colour vision.

12% of all males are legally "colour blind".



...... Phil

 

And a good 20% or more spell the word with an extra letter from
hundreds of years ago, when the rest of the world has moved on to
better word spellings. :-]

Tee hee hee...

 

What, you mean as in "True Blue Aussie"?

or John Williamson's composition "True Blue"
http://www.johnwilliamson.com.au/music/true_blue_21.html

 

1% resistors are typically (although not always) metal film. And many
metal film resistors are coated in that pale-blue laquer or epoxy that
you hate.

(There are also 1% wirewounds although these tend to have numbers and
not stripes printed on them, and they don't show up in consumer
equipment so often, so I'm going to assume you're not talking about
them.)

I used to believe that the blue coloring was somehow related to
flameproof ratings (and in consumer equipment metal film resistors are
commonly used where flameproof ratings are required by electrical
code) but this is just a guess of mine.

Certainly there are also a lot of metal film resistors with a brown or
even reddish color (I'm thinking of Vishay PR01/PR02/PR03). I much
prefer the pale blue body because none of the color stripes come close
to that color (blue and purple stripes are much darker); I have a much
harder time distinguishing red vs. brown (or red vs. brown vs. black)
on the brown and red-bodied resistors especially in poor lighting.

Doesn't matter much anyways, since almost everything new is surface-
mount with tiny white lettering that I cannot distinguish white from
black with! (To be fair some of the parts are laser-etched, so it's
really just a different reflectance of black... no wonder I can't read
it!)

Tim.

 

Collour? Dipshit.

 

Varies by maker.

 

That's what magnifiers are for.

 

You're a cowardly netkop, I own you now. have you recieved any mail?

 

Or dark red. Or green.

Graham

 

Or grey, I forgot that one. Electrosil (now there's a good old name) used grey
or was that Welwyn and Electrosil used the kind of dark ochre/red ?

Graham

 

Flame proof 'cement' covered Rs are typically grey IME. I have seen some with
that dark red/ochre body too though.

Graham

 

IDIOT.

COLOR is a vile American abberation.

Graham

 

Most of the axial ones I get are grey, though some are blue. But the SM
ones are all charcoal black, with the little confusing numbers on - like
(when they aren't just a manufacturer's code) 470 means 47 ohms, not 470
ohms.

But 0.1% S&M resistors come in a variety of entertaining colours.

Paul Burke

 

I think it is to help hide the black when you over-current them.
-mpm

 

The numbers just replace the color code bands. It's 47*10^0.

Iwo

 

Yep. I can't see the difference between orange & red & brown,
and blue & green on them. And Purple - don't get me started
on purple. (I refuse to call it violet on those ()^# blue
resistors.) And Yellow - what the hell is it - yellow,
white, silver, grey, gold? Some designer color? Maybe if I
used a magnifier... but dammit I can read a 1/8th watt carbon
just fine.

Ed