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> binning operations after production are all that separate precision resistors from cheap resistors.

Really? I would have assumed that resistors are so cheap that testing them is more expensive than designing the process up front around the tolerance.

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Yup really. Grab some 5% and 1% resistors and measure them with decent multimeter.

You'll find that their values are almost exactly: stated_value+/-tolerance rather than a range of values.

i.e a 100k 5% resistor will be almost exactly either 105k or 95k not some number in between.

Nope. Not buying it. Just pulled a couple of bog standard thick film 100K 1% 1206s and they are measuring at 99.94, 99.96, 100.02, 99.93 kiloohms.

They're probably batch controlled. There is no way every resistor is being tested for compliance given how cheap SMT resistors are.

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