Fixed value resistors

The diagram shows the construction of a carbon film resistor:

During manufacture, a thin film of carbon is deposited onto a small ceramic rod. The resistive coating is spiralled away in an automatic machine until the resistance between the two ends of the rod is as close as possible to the correct value. Metal leads and end caps are added, the resistor is covered with an insulating coating and finally painted with coloured bands to indicate the resistor value.

Carbon film resistors are cheap and easily available, with values within ±10% or ±5% of their marked, or 'nominal' value. Metal film and metal oxide resistors are made in a similar way, but can be made more accurately to within ±2% or ±1% of their nominal value. There are some differences in performance between these resistor types, but none which affect their use in simple circuits.

Wirewound resistors are made by winding thin wire onto a ceramic rod. They can be made extremely accurately for use in multimeters, oscilloscopes and other measuring equipment. Some types of wirewound resistors can pass large currents without overheating and are used in power supplies and other high current circuits.

What do resistors do?

Resistors limit current. In a typical application, a resistor is connected in series with an LED:

Enough current flows to make the LED light up, but not so much that the LED is damaged. Later in this Chapter, you will find out how to calculate a suitable value for this resistor. (LEDs are described in detail in Chapter 5.)

The 'box' symbol for a fixed resistor is popular in the UK and Europe. A 'zig-zag' symbol is used in America and Japan:

Resistors are used with transducers to make sensor subsystems. Transducers are electronic components which convert energy from one form into another, where one of the forms of energy is electrical. Alight dependent resistor, or LDR, is an example of an input transducer. Changes in the brightness of the light shining onto the surface of the LDR result in changes in its resistance. As will be explained later, an input transducer is most often connected along with a resistor to to make a circuit called a potential divider. In this case, the output of the potential divider will be a voltage signal which reflects changes in illumination.

Microphones and switches are input transducers. Output transducers include loudspeakers, filament lamps and LEDs. Can you think of other examples of transducers of each type?

In other circuits, resistors are used to direct current flow to particular parts of the circuit, or may be used to determine the voltage gain of an amplifier. Resistors are used with capacitors (Chapter 4) to introduce time delays.

Most electronic circuits require resistors to make them work properly and it is obviously important to find out something about the different types of resistor available, and to be able to choose the correct resistor value, in , , or M, for a particular application.