But I have to admit that that setup is far cleaner and more organized overall than my disaster of a workbench...
The labels reflect the location of the item in the folder (Folder x Page y) and also the shelf in Storage (Rack-Bay-Shelf-Place), if it's a part we use also in production.
Sorry about the delay, HN doesn't seem to notify me about comment replies.
I wrote a simple PHP script that generates the labels. It just pulls a bunch of data from our parts database and positions the text/graphical elements on a PDF page using fpdf. The Datamatrix/barcode is generated using Zint.
Once the PDF file is generated, the script passes it to /usr/bin/lp for instant printing to a Dymo LabelWriter, or sent with an attachment disposition for downloading and printing locally.
Hope this helps, please let me know if I may be of further assistance
Buying SMD box kits that are already populated is worth the cost. Like this.
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-technologi...
To a newcomer, just get some common values, and perhaps not even 100 of them. Then you find out which ones you use most, or a slightly less common value you're missing but use/want, and restock those.
To anyone else, you know what you do, what you use, get that - I'm not sure there's any point in generic advice.