How Small is an 0402 SMT Resistor? (Hint: It’s Really Small!)

That’s one small resistor! (Great photo by @TAUTIC)

(note: 0402/01005 = 0.4mm x 0.2mm, or 0.016″ x 0.008″)

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8 Comments

  1. Mike H
    April 12, 2011 at 4:23 pm

    Oops. That’s actually an 0402 METRIC- an 01005 in inch-land.

    0402 inch parts aren’t THAT small- they can be easily handled by tweezers and soldered with a fine-tip iron. For comparison they are about the size of each digit in the 2005 date mark.

    0402 inch parts are 1608 in metric speaking countries. I’ve run into this before where one of our customers said "it has to work with 0402 parts" and we freaked out thinking they meant metric when in fact they meant inch.

  2. Jayson Tautic
    April 12, 2011 at 4:44 pm

    Yup, this is an 0402 METRIC. Thought I was ordering the “inch” version when I got these. Fortunately I only purchased 10 for a prototype. Much more fun to photograph than to solder i’m sure!

  3. John Rehwinkel
    April 12, 2011 at 5:27 pm

    That’s actually a capacitor, not a resistor. But the point remains – whatever the component, 0402 (metric) is small!

  4. George Graves
    April 12, 2011 at 7:22 pm

    Link to high res please? Thank you.

  5. Jayson Tautic
    April 12, 2011 at 8:23 pm

    The full resolution file is available here: http://twitpic.com/4jlzdx/full

    And you’re right, this is a capacitor – 0.01uF to be exact.

  6. Joe
    April 12, 2011 at 8:48 pm

    Wow, what’s it rated at?

  7. Paul
    April 13, 2011 at 1:22 am

    We did a SMT soldering class at the Hive13 hackerspace, we used a camera document projector for some of the demonstrations.

    I took a couple pictures of three “inch” versions of SMT components, (0804, 0603, 0402) next to a penny and pencil for size comparison. It made for an amusing series of pictures:

    Link to the pictures:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/pvince/5492903303
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/pvince/5492903857

  8. Jayson Tautic
    April 13, 2011 at 6:27 pm

    6.3v, 10% tolerance

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Filed under: EE — by johngineer

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