Resistor Color Codes & Primer

Common Resistor

Resistors are color coded for easy reading. Imagine how many blind technicians there would be otherwise.

To determine the value of a given resistor look for the gold or silver tolorance band and rotate the resistor as in the photo above.(Tolerance band to the right). Look at the 1st color band and determine its color. This maybe difficult on small or oddly colored resistors. Now look at the chart and match the "1st & 2nd color band" color to the "Digit it represents". Write this number down.

Example:

First color is red which is 2
Second color is black which is 0
third color is yellow which is 10,000
Torerance is silver which is 10%

Therefore the equation is:

2 0 x 10,000 = 200,000 Ohms

Tolerances
Gold= 5%
Silver=10%
None=20%

`Resistor Color Code Chart`
1st. & 2nd Color Band	Digit it Represents	-----Multiplier-----
`BLACK`	0	X1
`BROWN`	1	X10
`RED`	2	X100
`ORANGE`	3	X1,000 or 1K
`YELLOW`	4	X10,000 or 10K
`GREEN`	5	X100,000 or 100K
`BLUE`	6	X1,000,000 or 1M
`VIOLET`	7	Silver is divide by 100
`GRAY`	8	Gold is divide by 10
`WHITE`

Now look at the 2nd color band and match that color to the same chart. Write this number next to the 1st Digit.

The Last color band is the number you will multiply the result by. Match the 3rd color band with the chart under multiplier. This is the number you will mulitple the other 2 numbers by. Write it next to the other 2 numbers with a multiplication sign before it. Example : 2 2 x 1,000.

To pull it all together now, simply multiply the first 2 numbers (1st number in the tens column and 2nd in the ones column) by the Multiplier.