Dear Friends,

Hope all of your are enjoying the weekend.

often we need precision descrete components such as Resistors & Capacitors particualrly in signal conditioning applications. The tolerance of the components is reflected as signal measurement error which is often undesirable. Its quite easy & cheap to get coarse tolerance componenets For example 1% 1/4 watt resistor costs 0.50Rs. [ USD 0.01 ] but the same resistor with 0.1% tolerance costs
1. 20Rs [ 0.4USD ] in local market with lead time 3 weeks.
2. RS charges 58Rs. [ 1.2USD ] with lead time 2 weeks.

Now the problem is even for 8 bit accuracy in measurement the component tolerance shouldnt exceed 0.39% and for 10 bit it must not exceed 0.1%. This means 1% tolerance components are almost useless when used in signal conditioning application. And the problem with fetching 0.1% tolerance components worsen the situation.

I heard of sorting technique from a friend of mine. According to him one can use cheap 1% components measure the component's actual value using a good quality DVM and and check if its lying within required tolerance band or not that is 0.4% for 8 bit and 0.1% for 10 bit system design. Using this method sort the compoents useful for signal conditioning. Is it a workable method?

How do you guys manage such situations?
Is there any other better method?

Thanks & Regards,
Prahlad Purohit