4 Band Resistor Calculator

Calculate the resistance of a 4 band resistor

Introduction

A resistor is a perhaps the most common building block used in circuits. Resistors come in many shapes and sizes this tool is used to decode information for color banded axial lead resistors.

4 Band Description

The number of bands is important because the decoding changes based upon the number of color bands. There are three common types: 4 band, 5 band, and 6 band resistors. For the 4 band resistor:

Band 1 – First significant digit.
Band 2 – Second significant digit
Band 3 – Multiplier
Band 4 – Tolerance

Resistance Value

The first 4 bands make up the resistance nominal value. The first 2 bands make up the significant digits where:
black – 0
brown – 1
red – 2
orange – 3
yellow – 4
green – 5
blue – 6
violet – 7
grey – 8
white – 9

The 3rd band or multiplier band is color coded as follows:
black – x1
brown – x10
red – x100
orange – x1K
yellow – x10K
green – x100K
blue – x1M
violet – x10M
grey – x100M
white – x1G
gold – .1
silver – .01

An example of a resistance value is:

band 1 = orange = 3,
band 2 = yellow = 4,
band 3 = blue = 1M

value = 34*1M = 34 Mohm

Resistance Tolerance

The fourth band is the tolerance and represents the worst case variation one might expect from the nominal value. The color code for tolerance is as follows:
brown – 1%
red – 2%
orange – 3%
yellow – 4%
green – .5%
blue – .25%
violet – .1%
gray – .05%
gold – 5%
silver – 10%

An example calculating the range of a resistor value is:

If the nominal value was 34 Ohm and the 4th band of the resistor was gold (5%) the value range would be nominal +/- 5% = 32.3 to 35.7