ANTENTOP- 01- 2007, # 009

Inductor Color Code

Inductor color code

As usual an inductor is marked by four or five ring strips. Since you can find out the value of the inductor at any installation of this one on a printed-circuit-board. Read value of the inductor from the end with a narrow strip. Read a wide strip the last. Table 1 shows the decoding of the color marks for inductors. Up to multiplier mark the value of the inductor is given in microHenry.

Four strip for mostly inductors used in the civil industry (Figure 1). However, military uses five ring strip, one wide strip (Figure 2) just tells you that it is a military inductor. May be you never meet with a military inductor (I have seen only a few military inductors...), but you should know about this one.

You can easy distinguish an inductor from a resistor. The inductor is more thick the resistor and sometimes shorter. Anyway you can use a DMV (Digital Multi Voltmeter) to prove that the part has resistance close to 1 Ohm (the resistance of shortened wires probe), so, you make sure this one is an inductor.

Table 1 Inductor color code