What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[Mr. Scram]

In great contrast to the frugal nature of the post above me i made a decision and purchased an oscillosope. There MIGHT be an argument it was a unilateral decision and unwise but any such argument can be wholly dismissed as blasphemy.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/tektronix7704A

Fully loaded Tektronix 7704A with 7B53A, 7A18, 7A26 & 7BA85 and a video showing traces on the screen.
Shipping was bloody murder but it is in proper contrast to the price it went for, i won uncontested.

Also, i too have some NOS VFDs coming my way as well, a couple IV-27s.

What I didn't mention is that my apparent frugal approach is mostly dictated by the money I've been haemorrhaging the past two weeks on other purchases, with a few more on the horizon currently being negotiated

I genuinely started looking into my moving plans more seriously again because of all the stuff I bought and the room that's inevitably going to need to set up. I don't think I can actually properly set it up until I've actually moved.

[MadTux]

Because of other interest in CNC machines, a small update on my Deckel FP2-NC milling machine adventure. Some good and some ugly news.

Good: Machine arrived in good shape (big truck with little machine on it ) and I got the electronics fixed, had to replace a blown transistor on the NPP90 board, initially suspected bad EPROMs, but was a visible blown transistor in the end.

Bad news: Some nasty galling/fretting/cold welding on the X-slide, wear/bad adjustment in the X-axis ballscrew trust bearings and a crapped out hydraulics pump. The galled X-ways are certainly the worst, not sure what to do about it, I'll probably ask the guys at practicalmachinist for advice (have a thread going there, too). Just in case anyone else buys such a machine, please inspect the X and Z ways before buying. Bellows on the X-axis are simply snapped on (same mechanism as in snap fasteners), so they are easy to pry off with a screwdriver for inspection.

I think the monkey operator splashed coolant behind the table, which flushed the lubrication and and started corrosion on the ways. Add some chips and the lack of lubrication and you get nasty galling like that.

Thrust bearings are easy to inspect by placing a dial indicator on the spindle face and moving the axis side to side. (you need an indicator with a long tip, couldn't fit my 1/1000mm indicator in the hole). X-thrust bearing has 4/100mm play/wear in my case.

Vertical spindle also suffered from monkey operator which made a million small dings while changing tools (and crashed it at least once, judging from the galling/cold welding ring at the edge). Found an hour counter in the top of the electrical cabinet a few days ago, 12000h only. So the monkey operators did quite some mayhem during that time, I've seen some machines with much more hours that were in better condition  .

[MadTux]

And as a bonus, all EPROMs dumps I've collected so far: Dialog4 and Heidenhein TNC-135. For Maho700P PLC firmware, search on mikrocontroller.net. Dialog 11 EPROMs are coming sometimes in the future... (rename that file into 7z, zip is too large and I can't attach .7z)

[Mr. Scram]

That Keithley looks like it's getting in your way. I'll PM you my address, so you can get rid of it.

[MadTux]

No, that Keithley helped me finding dried capacitors on NSV-56, it did a good job 

[nanofrog]

What's the boat anchor on the bottom of the Keithley & manual stack?

[MadTux]

3456A which needs some new caps in the PSU sometimes in the future, thereby I took a clapped out K2015 (had a hard life before, bought it cheaply from USA a couple of years ago) as replacement.

[julianhigginson]

You have via's inside pads... ?

yeah  - though if he's building them himself and prepared to spend the time, probably not a problem.. most of the vias in pads are for parts with accessible pins like the jellybean parts - so could be reworked... I'd be most worried about that xtal pad on this side. (assume other side doesn't have these on the QFN pads... that could get interesting)

To jump to a proper production run you could always cap the vias. it's not like the boards are made with cheap and simple process anyway. ;-)

[Smokey]

And we're back to the frugal again, I too won yet another oscilloscope but this one is just a parts mule to allow me to make a good one out of two. Its mainly hardware I want from this one so I'm hoping that in the flesh it looks a lot better then the picture does. 

Nice.  That looks like the perfect beginner scope according some people around here

[JPortici]

I bought one of those "Dallas semocondictor test pattern wafers" on ebay
Nice

[AF6LJ]

And we're back to the frugal again, I too won yet another oscilloscope but this one is just a parts mule to allow me to make a good one out of two. Its mainly hardware I want from this one so I'm hoping that in the flesh it looks a lot better then the picture does. 

Nice.  That looks like the perfect beginner scope according some people around here

Also a good source for those fragile HP knobs that are getting harder to find.

[Mr. Scram]

I bought one of those "Dallas semocondictor test pattern wafers" on ebay
Nice

It's so totally useless, but at the same time so incredibly cool and in some way quite profound. It's these shiny bits of sand that power so much of our modern lives.

I've itched to buy some a number of times, but decided to buy something slightly more useful every time. One day!

[BFX]

Today arrived this nice 30kg beast 
HP8713B Scalar Network Analyzer ... next step ... hack to HP8714B VNA
Last step: make some reorganization on my shelf to place this heavy guy safely 
 

[Specmaster]

And we're back to the frugal again, I too won yet another oscilloscope but this one is just a parts mule to allow me to make a good one out of two. Its mainly hardware I want from this one so I'm hoping that in the flesh it looks a lot better then the picture does. 

Nice.  That looks like the perfect beginner scope according some people around here

Haha, well I got it today and at the moment it looks terrible, seller made no attempt to clean it up, lets hope its honest dirt. Maybe it might be persuaded to spring to life who knows, either way, it has a decent set of knobs which is my mine concern at the moment for my other scope. 

[Specmaster]

Nice.  That looks like the perfect beginner scope according some people around here

Also a good source for those fragile HP knobs that are getting harder to find.

Thats what I'm hoping Sue, soon find once I've cleaned it up a little first.

[AF6LJ]

Nice.  That looks like the perfect beginner scope according some people around here

Also a good source for those fragile HP knobs that are getting harder to find.

Thats what I'm hoping Sue, soon find once I've cleaned it up a little first.

It's beginning to look like I have enough parts from four spectrum analyzers to make three work..
And have a knob left over to replace the one that is disintegrating on my HP-8640B.

[BU508A]

I've received yesterday a solder pot. I would consider this thing rather than a potential death trap.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121118437516

I did a little teardown of it and I think I'll replace the electronics with something more safety.
And, of course, I had to remove the blue paint from under the earth connection.

Here are some pics:

[Cyberdragon]

OH NOES! You bought one of those terrible things?

[BU508A]

OH NOES! You bought one of those terrible things?

Guilty, Your Honor.
And I regret it. Looking now for something more reasonable.

[McBryce]

I've one of those too, but it only cost €15 and I only needed it for one job, so the quality wasn't really important as long as it got the job done without killing me (which it did).

McBryce.

[URI]

I've received yesterday a solder pot. I would consider this thing rather than a potential death trap.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121118437516

I did a little teardown of it and I think I'll replace the electronics with something more safety.
And, of course, I had to remove the blue paint from under the earth connection.

Come one, don't be so picky!   
I once bought a A3 capable film laminating device from a merchant based in germany that had a metal case without any transformer or galvanic isolation and without any PE-connection at all but had a fake CE-sign on it! 

I demanded the CE-declaration of conformity from the seller and cc'ed that to official control also.
Soon after that I noticed the seller took it out his range of products on offer. But he never informed me about the fact that he never should have sold this device to me neither did he offer me to return that death trap and to pay back my money. 

So I kept it (and didn't dump it) because it's basically working really well but had to rework the design regarding electrical safety fundamentally to not getting struck with the first fault occuring. 

You have to be very careful with cheap devices from china with a AC power inlet on it. You get what you pay for. Mostly crap. 

[tooki]

I've one of those too, but it only cost €15 and I only needed it for one job, so the quality wasn't really important as long as it got the job done without killing me (which it did).

McBryce.

It got the job done? Or it killed you? 

[ManuelMcLure]

I just placed an order for an Anet A8 3D printer, the external MOSFET boards to solve the most pressing safety issue with this printer (too big a current draw on the mainboard heated bed and hot end connectors) and the optional bed leveling sensor.

[Specmaster]

Not purchased today but delivered today was 8 of these croc clips that were supposed to suitable for 4mm banana plugs, 3 had internal screw threads and the other 5 were crimp terminations, the Chinese strike again 

Emailed seller and waiting a reply, this happens all to regularly with Ebay sellers in China.

[McBryce]

I've one of those too, but it only cost €15 and I only needed it for one job, so the quality wasn't really important as long as it got the job done without killing me (which it did).

McBryce.

It got the job done? Or it killed you? 

Well I'm still here aren't I?

Btw: This arrived for my newly acquired Agilent 53181 yesterday: http://www.ebay.de/itm/NEW-53131-53132-53181-Frequency-counter-OPT-030-3G-option/111413354119
It was the cheapest version of this clone available, but the device and soldering etc are top and it works like a charm.

McBryce.