I likewise have purchased a few kits  - which are somewhat costly. The labor
adder is significant for the distributors to put the kits together. I have
0805's & 1/4 Watters that are a couple of years old this way.
Most often I just order more than I need for each phase of each project,
chalking it off to "Attrition" which is a legit accounting code. Many
passives are so cheap that they fall under the "operating supplies" categort
and are not accounted for anyway.
Whole bunches of great varieties can be saved when ordering for a proto or
pre-production run. 4 or 5 % of extra PICS can leave you with a nice play
collection in short time...Once you get comfortable with circuit snippets
that you will tend to re-use for this employer - and assuming you'll
actually re-use them in your designs once or twice through the cycle and
you'll only need to order "nbew" parts as they come up.

If you use digi-key, their onling ordering system is s breeze anyway. Search
a part, link the datasheet, decide and order, click to move on to the next
part. Printing the PO page gives a nice rough draft of a BOM......what could
be easier?

The key for me is that the order quantities that cover attrition in time
came to make up the draws full of common parts that I use every time a new
idea or project comes up. It takes a little time this way, but the cost is
virtually unobservable...


 what is the best way to stock this lab
> so that I can
> reasonably expect to put together barebones prototypes
> without having to buy
> anything?  I'd like to keep cost down if possible, below
> maybe a couple of
> hundred dollars, but I'd also like to know that within
> reason, I'll have a
> few of most of the generic parts needed for most projects
> (i.e., two or
> three types of diodes, two or three types of NPN/PNP/NMOS/PMOS/JFET
> transistors, LED displays and drivers, etc) WITHOUT having to
> sit down and
> order them individually.  Is there a company that sells a box labelled
> "Random Common Electronic Bits"?
>
> Thanks!
> Mike H.
>
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