Hello everyone.

Last week I was randomly selected as a winner of giveaway as part of quiz in Ferrites Essential module sponsored by Würth Elektronik. Today I received the reward. Let’s look at it.

Code of the Kit which I received is 742 791. More details about kit you can find at it’s WE page: Design Kit WE-CBF/WE-PBF/WE-CMS/WE-SUKW Ferrites

You can buy it for example at Farnell/Newark here: Buy Now

Unboxing

Kit come in branded paper box.

Inside the box is nested plastic box holding the main kit.

You can notice tweezer label on the right side of the box and tweezer above it. It is simple plastic tweezer. Tweezer have 93302 written on ait and most probably it is this one: http://www.waterun.com.cn/En/Products/show?id=567

It is plastic so it is impossible to use it when hand soldering components form the kit but for picking component out of the box it is suitable. Generally, it is good accessory bundled with electronic component kit and I like it.

Now let’s look to the kit inside:

The main contents of the kit (ferrites) are stored in plastic test tubes. There are 34 of 36 slots filled. On the bottom there is holder and test tubes remain fixed even if you swap the kit upside down. Every test tube has label describing its content.

Kit contents

Kit has inlay letter describing the parts. It is also available in PDF for download at WE page.

According to website kit should contain 690 parts of 34 value and 10 case sizes. When I was waiting for kit, I was thinking about parts quantity because 690 / 34 = ~20,29 and this is fractional number. So, there are some parts in larger quantities than some other. By the way I counted 705 parts in the kit instead of 690. Now I know what the WE slogan “More than you expect” which is written on the boxes means. Most parts are in standard 1206, 1210, 1806 and 1812 packages. Last row contains parts in different (larger and longer) packages. There is also confusion because kit page on WE website do not link all parts which are in kit. Kit has 34 parts types and only 30 of them is linked on website. Website information also have no information about quantities for each part in kit. For these reasons I decided to summarize kit in the table below.

The WE parts best fit designs with Maxim Integrated chips because their parts follow the same naming convention – just a random numbers. All part starts with number 742 which most probably indicates ferrites. Most components have second part set to 792 but there are also few parts from 793 and 751 series. The last numbers most probably have some meaning, but I did not find any relation between the number and value. Components have broad range of values. Maximum impedances are in range between 50 and 1300 ohms at frequency about 1 GHz. Mentioned are also impedances at 100 MHz. Parts in the kit have 100 MHz Impedances in range 30 to 1000 ohms so you have very broad options to select. Permitted currents range from 200 mA to 6A. WE provides fantastic documentation for each part including CAD files and simulation data as well as detailed datasheet which shows the most details of part. Similarly at the kit page there is PDF document containing summarized Impedance characteristics plots for all parts in the kit.

My last note is about status of parts. Kit was designed in 2010 and two parts from the kit was marked as NRND in meantime but generally kit is still very usable and valuable.

While parts are in test tubes, they are placed in cut tape except large size components in last row which are in loose form.

The 1206 and 1210 parts are stored in 3 cut tapes with 10 units each, total 30 parts of each 1206 and 1010 value:

The larger 1806 and 1812 parts are stored in one bend tape with 15 pieces per value:

Remaining parts in last row has non-standard case size and are stored in loose form except the first one which is on the cut tape like in previous cases. The first three units from the row are 10 pcs each and the largest parts are 5 pcs each.

Summary

I have not tried the any part yet, but I currently work on one design in which I will use ferrite and plan to test some parts from this kit for filtering. After selected as a winner I also decided to experiment with ferrite used in boost DC/DC converter but currently I have no time to do some extensive tests of these components because I have lot of work with finishing university.

It is very nice kit. While information about kit is incomplete on the web, everything became clear after opening kit. Kit has nice structure, everything (paper box, plastic box, test tubes, letters) are WE branded and looks very nice. Kit contains lot of parts covering large range of values. There are some other ferrites kits in WE offer differing in size (this is large size kit, there is small size also) and type. All of them looks valuable but for people who use ferrites only rarely there are slightly expensive (but not overpriced) I think. For company it should be ok. If you are rich enough, you can even go WE ferrites rack: Alpha-Rack EMC: Ferrites which contains this kit and few other. Also note that this is not the only kit offered by WE. Instead they offer similar kits for almost tall other parts they offer, so you can find similar nice kits for example for LEDs, Inductors, connectors, and many other.