SMD Reference Sheets: Printable Package Sizes and Capacitor Codes

Hand-soldering surface mount parts is difficult, and it gets harder still when the parts go on a small PCB. These are three printable reference sheets for SMD work: package sizes at real-life scale, PCB track widths and hole sizes, and how to read the codes printed on capacitors. Print them, keep them next to your soldering station, and hold a part against the page to see what size it is.

Print at real size

The sheets only work as a size reference if they print at the original size. Print on A4 paper and do not use fit to page. Then the dimensions of the parts on the sheet match real life.

Choosing the right size

The first sheet is about choosing a package size. According to the sheet, 0603 (imperial) is about the smallest size generally usable for hand assembly. You can go smaller, to 0402 or below, but hand-soldering it is a bad time. You can also go larger, to 0805 or above, at the cost of more money and board space. The sheet calls 0603 a good choice for general-purpose surface mount prototyping.

It also lists metric and imperial codes side by side, from 01005 up to 2512, next to squares that show a real 1 x 1 mm, 0.1 x 0.1 inch and 1 x 1 cm area for comparison. That comparison is handy because the same part is named differently in metric and imperial.

Download the size sheet (PDF)

The full reference sheet

The A4 landscape sheet (version 1.0.3, release date 5 April 2021) packs the most into one page:

• Passive rectangular packages, from 01005 to 2512, with dimensions in millimetres and inches.
• Tantalum capacitors, sizes A to E with their EIA standards, and aluminium capacitors in sizes A to E/F.
• Diode packages: SOD-723, SOD-523, SOD-323, SOD-128, SOD-123 and SOD-80C, plus DO-214AA, AB and AC and the MELF family (MELF 0207, MiniMELF 0204 and MicroMELF 0102).
• IC packages: SOT-23, SOT-223, TO-252, TO-263, SO8, TSSOP8, SSOP8, SOP8, QFN32 and 32 TQFP.
• PCB references: track width, wire size against current (AWG, diameter and ampere), hole diameters, via sizes and a pitch reference from 2.54 mm down to 1.00 mm.

Download the full reference sheet (PDF)

The values are on the sheet itself, so print it rather than reading numbers off a screen.

Capacitor coding

Small capacitors carry short codes instead of a printed value. The third sheet explains how to read them for the three common types: ceramic, electrolytic and tantalum. It covers the first digits and multiplier, the maximum voltage and the tolerance, and includes a capacitance conversion table between microfarads, nanofarads and picofarads.

Its worked example is a tantalum capacitor marked 475: the first digits are 47 and the multiplier is 100 000, which gives 4.7 µF.

Download the capacitor coding sheet (PDF)

Get the sheets

All three sheets, as PDF and PNG, are in the SMD-Reference-Sheets repository on GitHub. There are no releases, so open the PDF you need and print it, or download the repository as a ZIP. The repository is released under the MIT licence.