Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [tolerance]

A window of acceptance, often expressed as a percentage, in which a non-perfect value is still accepted as usable.

106 questions
36
votes
8 answers

Are two (or N) resistors in series more precise than one big resistor?

Let's say I have one 2 kΩ resistor with 5% tolerance. If I replace it with two 1 kΩ resistors with 5% tolerance, will resulting tolerance go up, down, or remain unchanged? I'm bad with probabilities, and I'm not sure what exactly tolerance…
Amomum
  • 675
  • 7
  • 14
29
votes
3 answers

Why are resistors tolerances relative instead of absolute?

Every resistor has a tolerance, this provides the user with an idea of the accuracy of the product. This tolerance is represented by a percentage. This means: a big value resistor will be less accurate than a small resistor with the same…
M.Ferru
  • 3,926
  • 3
  • 22
  • 48
27
votes
10 answers

Can a 10% resistor be used as a 1% resistor?

If my schematic calls for a 1% resistor, can I use a 10% resistor that measures to the correct resistance within 1% or is there some quality to tolerance beyond what it measures Ohm-wise? For example, my schematic calls for a 1% 1000-Ohm resistor. I…
Tyler Durden
  • 2,186
  • 4
  • 34
  • 49
21
votes
10 answers

Is there ever any reason to prefer 5% tolerance resistors over 1%?

I work at an electronics store and the other day a customer came in who was rebuilding a circuit board. I sold him some resistors, but later he came back in wanting to return some of them because they were only 1% tolerance, and he needed 5%. I'm…
Justin Pederson
  • 211
  • 2
  • 6
20
votes
11 answers

Is there a way to average resistors together to get a tighter overall resistance tolerance?

I have a very sensitive, kHz frequency level, application where I need two matched resistors of the same resistance better than 0.05%. Like maybe by one magnitude (0.005%). I am basically needing to match two resistors together so as to form a…
Jirhska
  • 519
  • 3
  • 10
16
votes
6 answers

Why are we still using resistors with %5 tolerance while they can even manufacture a 14.318182MHz crystal?

Year is 2012 and I can only find %5-tol resistors in the local market. They can make transistors at molecular scale, they can manufacture 14.318182MHz crystals, they can place trillions of flip-flops inside a memory chip. Then why don't they start…
hkBattousai
  • 13,913
  • 31
  • 114
  • 190
16
votes
2 answers

4-bit bus address selection via analog input pin: Monte Carlo simulation shows overlapping address values

I designed a small sensor PCB for my master thesis with an ATtiny44 microcontroller. I need about 200 of these boards for my application and 16 are always locally connected to controller board. The whole network looks like this: To communicate…
KarlKarlsom
  • 1,792
  • 2
  • 13
  • 26
13
votes
6 answers

Resistors - binning and weird distributions

I read about a little quirk related to binning resistors in a comment on this recent question. Some manufacturers will sell, for example, 1% and 5% resistors that are really made in the same batch. When the resistors are being sorted by value, the…
Greg d'Eon
  • 3,807
  • 4
  • 24
  • 50
12
votes
5 answers

Why would a part be available as 4.99k and 5k?

I was looking at chip resistors, and came across the MORNTA1001AT5, which comes in many resistance values. The resistor tolerance is 0.1%, so what is the logic of having the part available in both 4.99k and 5.0k versions? Generally, if you needed…
b degnan
  • 3,167
  • 2
  • 17
  • 36
10
votes
10 answers

Reducing the tolerance of resistors manually

All the resistors available come with a finite amount tolerance. This is undesirable particularly in highly sensitive systems. While we can use resistors with the least tolerance available, I want to know if there are any methods (something like…
TheLoneKing
  • 675
  • 2
  • 8
  • 22
9
votes
3 answers

PCB enclosure tolerances

I can imagine problems of PCBs not fitting into their enclosures or misaligned screw/hole pairs. Are these type of problems common, especially with the dirt cheap enclosures? I am planning to use one that has a "0.8 mm tolerance". It does not…
kellogs
  • 1,044
  • 9
  • 18
8
votes
3 answers

Parts tolerance simulations in ltspice

I just recently found this tutorial (and various other places mentioning a similar technique) when trying to evaluate how one of my circuits behaves when using real world components with real world tolerances. However normally I design it with…
PlasmaHH
  • 6,498
  • 5
  • 38
  • 49
7
votes
6 answers

Resistor Tolerance - are measured resistor with the same value but different tolerances the same?

Probably a real newbie question but I can't seem to find an answer easily... If I have 2 resistors both 1K but one is a 1% tolerance and the other is 10% and I measure them and they are the same. Let's assume exactly 1k, then are they effectively…
Guy Taylor
  • 107
  • 1
  • 7
6
votes
2 answers

5V Tolerance of 3.3V OUTPUT pin

Let's assume the following scenario: uC (@3.3V VDD) drives an I/O pin HIGH 3.3V (just to be clear, it's not an open-drain pin, so the p-channel mosfet of the output pin is actually driving the pin to VDD level) Pin is also rated as a 5V tolerant…
Nitro
  • 61
  • 3
6
votes
7 answers

Component Tolerance Probability

This is more of a manufacturing question than anything else. What is the probability distribution of component tolerances? For example, let's say I ordered a 100 ohm, 5% resistor, and I order 100 parts. Are the odds of getting a 95 ohm resistor the…
JohnnyMac
  • 170
  • 5
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8