Help for the colour blind

[Barry]

The colour coding of resistors is read starting at the end where the bands are closest to one of the lead out wires. Thus in the example shown above, the bands are: brown, black, orange, gold, so 10 x 10³ ohm +/-5%, or 10kOhm +/-5%.

[struth]

as you can see the the tolerance band here is closest to the leads but it is last to be read. you can also see the 3 readers are all closer together

[Barry]

In that example the order is obvious as gold is never used as a number. And I agree that usually the resistance band are closer together with the tolerance band laying further away.

I'm sure there are several examples of resistors displaying ambigious colour bands - in those instances I would simply measure the resistance to determine its value.



Even worse I have come across cases where the colour coding was wrong, for example with some Piher resistors.

[Filterlab]

It's all a bit of a mess isn't it.

[Macca]

nope it where the bars are closest together

Benidorm?

[Beobloke]

OK

I hope this is better

Attachment 29519

In that case, 130 Ohms, 1%

[Barry]

In that case, 130 Ohms, 1%

If you are reading the order of the bands as brown, orange, black, black and brown, then that would be 13 Ohm, 0%. What then would the "fourth" brown band imply?

[Beobloke]

In the picture I quoted I’m reading it from right to left as brown, orange, black, black and then another brown. There’s an bigger gap between this last brown and the others, so this denotes the tolerance band.

The brown, orange, black, black gives 130 Ohms and the last brown denotes 1% tolerance.

[Barry]

It just goes to show the ambiguity that can occur with resistors where the first band is either brown or red. How would you read a resistor if the first band was pink?

I have, until now, never seen a resistor using four bands to denote the resistance value, so if confronted with such I would simply measure the value.

[walpurgis]

I would simply measure the value.

I do that anyway.