We've got a ton of those bins and we use them more for medium-sized parts, like cable guides, caged bearings, headset races, brake pads, axles, and the like. We also have several sizes so we use the other sizes for bigger parts as well.
For really small parts, like cable stops for old road bikes, or loose barrel adjusters, or frame bolts, we use the old standby "unit of workshop drawers" kind of thing that you get all over the place, new, at garage sales, on craigslist, donated. - usually the drawers are clear hard acrylic plastic and the cabinet can be metal or plastic.
One thing in the neighborhood I'd like to suggest (but not in your question per se) [HAMMERS[] is that a lot of the smallest parts, like mixed washers and mixed bolts or mixed nuts, or even things as big as cable guides which may have a wide variety of aesthetics, can benefit from a sorting tray.
A sorting tray is just a very wide, and very shallow tray. A large baking sheet works well in most cases, or even a large cake pan. We have some in the shop and we've cut holes in one corner with a doorknob hole saw/bit/thing. The way it works is that you can store the smaller pieces however, but when you need to dig through them to get the part you need you dump the bin into the sorting tray and spread them all out so you can see what's there more quickly and easily. It works pretty swell. I've even thought about making a sorting table with a little barrier around the perimeter and a small opening at the corner for "draining" but haven't yet tested that out.
Another issue that's difficult to orient participants around is when two parts look really similar to the untrained eye. We tried to keep out skewers in bins according to front and rear, and it absolutely cannot happen. New people (and most of our people will always be new) just cannot tell the difference between front and rear skewers. We tried placing them in completely different areas of the parts room but it did not help at all.
Another unconventional thing I do is when we used to have a shortage of bins, but also a shortage of parts, I'd use a bin for two completely visually different parts that absolutely could not be mistaken for one another, like brake pads and axles, or seats and fenders. Obviously this is weird and not ideal, but it worked when we didn't have enough bins. For the most part, people used it without instruction accurately.
I mentioned the sorting tray in part because the small parts people seem to need most are washers, bolts, and nuts, which in my experience are rarely sorted comprehensively. Those three tend to be in the most constant demand as far as loose parts go, unless you're talking valve caps or tire patches or end crimps/ferrules or whatever.
-Cyclista Nicholas
On 2018-01-26 01:52, David Oliver wrote:
For medium/larger items open bins like the ones you're talking about are totally fine. I definitely find that for smaller items around bolt/nut-sized you'll end up with them mixed up really quickly, I like tackle boxes/bins with lids for anything that size because it stops the person with the bolt in their hand from just throwing it in whichever bin is closest.
On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 8:23 PM, Josh Bisker jbisker@gmail.com wrote:
Pals, we've got a bunch of long skinny red u-line bins (like 4" x 18") on a couple long shelves now that are BALLING. They're super easy access for people to get their hands on small and medium sized parts. What are your like, top ten or top twenty small or medium sized things that people need to get ahold of? What would I not think of, but you're like "oh folks actually need XYZ like all the damn time"? Or do you have cautionary tales, like "don't put fifteen pounds of M5 bolts in one of those, they will get mixed up immediately with other things and it will suck"?
Also check it: we're going to take a tip from Kickstand in Vancouver and hot-glue the part itself to the front of the bin, so that no one needs to remember just what a thing is called to have access to the magic.
Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 <(914)%20500-9890> New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/
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