We all know one and rely on them in our time of need. Yet for all of their creativity, practicality and value an engineer will default to tech talk faster than a short circuit. We will never be able to fully understand them, but here’s a few pointers as to what they may be talking about.

Today we focus on component sizes for devices that are placed on circuit boards. See diagram to the right, “Is that a 201 or a 603”, this is referring to the physical size of the surface mount device that will be placed on the circuit board. Anything below a 1008 is going to be hard to see, let alone hold but if your going small, 201’s are one of our favorites. (ICA can place 01005 on a flexi-circuit !)

So the next time you find yourself on the wrong end of an engineering monologue and a 2010 or a 201 comes up hopefully you have a frame of reference to fall back on from reading this.