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Resistor Colour Codes

1st
sig
fig
2nd
sig
fig
3rd
sig
fig
No
of
0s
Tol
+-
%

A slightly cryptic version of the resistor colour code chart, for experts only. There are lots of much more user-friendly ones to be found on the net, just go to Google (or whatever your favourite search engine is) and type in "resistor colour code chart".

How to use it:

A. If your resistor has (i) three stripes; or (ii) four stripes the last one being a recognized tolerance colour:
• Read the 1st and 2nd sig figs, and skip the 3rd sig fig. Get the number of trailing zeros and tolerance from columns 4 and 5.

B. If your resistor has (i) four stripes; or (ii) five stripes the last one being a recognized tolerance colour:
• Read the 1st 2nd and 3rd sig figs. Get the number of trailing zeros and tolerance from columns 4 and 5.

Notes:
• columns in which a ! appears are not usually valid - be careful
• if the number of zeroes is shown as -ve, move the decimal point that number of places to the left

! 0 0 0 !
1 1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2
3 3 3 3 !
4 4 4 4 !
5 5 5 5 !
6 6 6 6 !
7 7 7 ! !
8 8 8 ! !
9 9 9 ! !
! ! ! -1 5
! ! ! -2 10