With all the parts, the raw boards, and the solder paste stencil for the TeleMetrum board now in hand, you'd think we'd be about ready to load and reflow a board. Not quite!

The 0402 passives are going to require lots of magnification for me to place accurately. And the solder paste has a finite working life. That leads me to want to prepare all the parts in advance so that there's minimal fumbling around during the "pick and place" phase of the operation.

So, I've been transferring the passive parts from the cut auto-load tapes they came in to plastic prescription medicine bottles I've been collecting for the purpose. Miraculously, these happen to be a near-perfect size for the sticky labels provided by Digi-Key with each part!

My next step will be to label the bins on the Mini Muffin Pans I bought to stage the parts for placement. Then I'll load the bins with parts, and hopefully that'll make picking and placing with tweezers and inspection microscope go reasonably quickly. Hopefully tomorrow!