Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

I don't remember the name, there was a chemical  which has a small little brush to apply on cracked ABS. It will melt the two edge and the crack disappears. Didn't know about this ABS cement will try it on this fume extractor may be.

There's a long list of solvents that will, to some extent, do the job but among the commoner ones are:

• Acetone - a bit too fast evaporating to do a good job, because it can evaporate before it has fully dissolved the plastic
• Methyl-Ethyl Ketone - similar to acetone.
• Limonene - rather slow to evaporate and can leave the 'welded' surface soft and tacky for too long.
• Methylene chloride - just about the sweet spot, but sometimes difficult to find.

There are, or course, plenty of proprietary formulations (many of which are actually simple single chemicals). These are easy to find, but tend to be highly overpriced compared to using a basic solvent for the job.

[Mr. Scram]

Guess what, TopLoser got me another time

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/fs-(uk)-weller-fune-extractor-zero-smog-2-(damaged)/

I don't remember the name, there was a chemical  which has a small little brush to apply on cracked ABS. It will melt the two edge and the crack disappears. Didn't know about this ABS cement will try it on this fume extractor may be.

Nice catch! I wouldn't have minded that one myself.

[HalFET]

I don't remember the name, there was a chemical  which has a small little brush to apply on cracked ABS. It will melt the two edge and the crack disappears. Didn't know about this ABS cement will try it on this fume extractor may be.

There's a long list of solvents that will, to some extent, do the job but among the commoner ones are:

• Acetone - a bit too fast evaporating to do a good job, because it can evaporate before it has fully dissolved the plastic
• Methyl-Ethyl Ketone - similar to acetone.
• Limonene - rather slow to evaporate and can leave the 'welded' surface soft and tacky for too long.
• Methylene chloride - just about the sweet spot, but sometimes difficult to find.

There are, or course, plenty of proprietary formulations (many of which are actually simple single chemicals). These are easy to find, but tend to be highly overpriced compared to using a basic solvent for the job.

MEK is often sold as PVC or model building glue as well. 

[mnementh]

Fellow TEA-sufferers!

xrunner has brought to my attention a couple of noteworthy things about the TEA house:

1. This thread is in the Top 10 Topics (by Replies) list for the EEVblog forum. In fact, it's currently #7 with 3745 replies.

I guess this means we now have TEA²: TEA Thread Engagement Addiction

2. We will be celebrating a year of TEA come January 15. What shall we do to celebrate (aside from buying more gear, which is a given)?

That's all for now. I return you to your watch lists.

We should organise a giveaway!

I'll show myself out.

We should give away organs!

.....


What...? 

Doh! When I bought my last desktop PC I actually decided to buy a workstation grade thing because I had the same trouble with an enterprise SSD I was supposed to be testing. It was about 5cm too long! Went for an HP Z620 which is a little large but workable: https://imgur.com/a/uRH5c

Just agreed a £20 refund for damaged foot and HT problems. I'm happy with that. Means total expenditure on this is £29 which isn't a lot for a decent 50MHz analogue scope.

Rack lugs are evil! We're forever getting damaged things with them just from moving servers around.

Good deal on a great scope. I too have suffered the agony of single-wall cartons on fleaBay purchases; received a surround sound amp similarly damaged. Ultimately kit bashed and installed some new feet scavenged from an old turntable after spanning/reinforcing the damaged area with fender washers.

I believe these use the same HV section as my 2230; if so, they have chronic problems with the HV multiplier caps and the HV tripler/flyback. My 2230 is down for a second time with a toasted HV tripler; has been for over 2 years. I have the replacement tripler, but don't trust the scope not to smoke it until I can check the caps for leakage or replace them all. I rebuilt the HV section when I first got the scope 10 years ago; so probably time to rebuild it all again. 

I really hate to tear it down again, but man the crisp even trace trace of this vintage Tek is just viscerally satisfying; you want to smoke a fine cigar after a successful session using them. 

If you haven never done it before it's good fun making ABS cement. Get some acetone and some ABS the same colour (mine came from a printer tray), dissolve the ABS in the acetone (takes a couple of days). When it goes all gooey, use the goop and a cocktail stick to seal up the ridges. Leave it for another day then sand with wet-n-dry, then dremel polishing wheel. Looks like nothing has happened to the plastic ever

If you want something a bit closer to a classic filler in texture, add a bit of (unscented) talcum powder to it. For something much stronger add a bit of finely chopped fibreglass to it (just repeated trim 1mm at a time off some fibreglass matting with scissors - wearing gloves and a mask). Either may change the colour a little, so experimentation may be necessary to get a good match.

I love the smell of long-chain polymers in the morning! Smells like VICTORY!!!


Thank you, Mister Lizard!   


mnem
We're gonna need another Timmy!

[Specmaster]

Do you think some of the ABS cement shit would fix this up? I do not have the missing bits, it was like this before I purchased the beast?

20171117_171832 by Graham Butcher, on Flickr

[Specmaster]

Nice traces on that there scope, but how in blue blazes did you manage to get 4 traces up, thought the 2225 was a dual channel device 

EDIT: I just fell in, did you notice the big splash?  The other 2 traces are the first 2 but magnified by 50 times and that clever 2225 shows them side by side, clever stuff, dead handy that. 

[HalFET]

Nice traces on that there scope, but how in blue blazes did you manage to get 4 traces up, thought the 2225 was a dual channel device 

EDIT: I just fell in, did you notice the big splash?  The other 2 traces are the first 2 but magnified by 50 times and that clever 2225 shows them side by side, clever stuff, dead handy that. 

They are really nice scopes, honestly for analog scopes Tek was great, but the moment they went digital HP/Agilent/Keysight caught up big time.

I'll first test out the U1081A card, but afterwards I'll see if I can get the heatsink off in a safe way to make some high resolution pictures.

[URI]

Fucks sake. Doesn't anyone know how to pack stuff properly?

Also on power up, HT arcing!

Refund-o-clock.

[image of damage snipped]

Oh no, that's so annoying.
Glad to read that the oscilloscope survived and that you got a refund!

[tggzzz]

There's a long list of solvents that will, to some extent, do the job but among the commoner ones are:

• Acetone - a bit too fast evaporating to do a good job, because it can evaporate before it has fully dissolved the plastic
• Methyl-Ethyl Ketone - similar to acetone.
• Limonene - rather slow to evaporate and can leave the 'welded' surface soft and tacky for too long.
• Methylene chloride - just about the sweet spot, but sometimes difficult to find.

I've used methylene chloride to remove significant cracks in a Tek 1502 case. It has very good "creep" into thin cracks, and "molten" plastic can bridge larger cracks and gaps.

IIRC it is carcinogenic, if that bothers you.

I got a small bottle at a local model engineering faire.

[HalFET]

I can't get the Agilent/Keysight Acqiris U1081A in my desktop 

So I first moved the hard drives around to make space for the card, so ok, that's done! Then I unplugged virtually every cable to be able to slip the card in, but to no avail...
Turns out the cooler is so thick that it bumps into the graphics card it's heatsink   

I think I'm going to head over to my parents and proclaim that I need to do some much needed maintenance (run CCleaner? ) on their desktop computer 

[Mr. Scram]

I can't get the Agilent/Keysight Acqiris U1081A in my desktop 

So I first moved the hard drives around to make space for the card, so ok, that's done! Then I unplugged virtually every cable to be able to slip the card in, but to no avail...
Turns out the cooler is so thick that it bumps into the graphics card it's heatsink   

I think I'm going to head over to my parents and proclaim that I need to do some much needed maintenance (run CCleaner? ) on their desktop computer 

Integrated graphics time!

[neo]

The yuletide spirits has struck! It really bit me in the ass too,
Pros
ebay has a coupon for 20% 
Got another multimeter 
6.5 digit nixie 
Off the top of my wishlist 
Successfully used Christmas as an excuse 
45 dollar price tag 
All options except rms converter and external references 
Cons
Heavily restricted coupon despite it only saying in the ultra fine print that it is 
72 dollars shipping   
Pay after delivery, meant to give me 14 days to shake out the couch,instead gave me 9 
Sold as parts, no warranty given nor implied 

Finally the grand finale, of this post and perhaps my life if i'm not careful (mostly jesting), the Fluke 8400A!

[mnementh]

That is quite probably the most fabulous example of boat anchor pulchritude I've seen in at least three weeks!!! 

mnem
ROOWWWWRRRR!

[Specmaster]

Bargain there, just hope it doesn't need too much repair work doing to it. It's the fore runner to my 8505A then and a really nice piece of kit. Have you got any space to fill? 

[neo]

Bargain there, just hope it doesn't need too much repair work doing to it. It's the fore runner to my 8505A then and a really nice piece of kit. Have you got any space to fill? 

I always have space to fill, even if i don't have space to fill i can find space to fill.

As for repair work i know that the switches might be questionable, i got a plan if they are. I just hope it isn't like my 8800A with an untraceable short on one of its power rails.

8000A, 8010A, 8050A, 8200A, 8400A, 8800A, those are the flukes i got and i think i might have a "got to get them all!" complex.

The only broken or semi broken among those are the 8000A odd 1 digit glitch, 8200A serious switch problem, and the 8800A with a seemingly impossible to trace short.

[bitseeker]

Is the display on that one LED or choobes?

[neo]

The 8400A? Nixes as i believe i mentioned.

Just to be entirely clear...

Nixies, beautiful glowing nixies!

[bitseeker]

D'oh! You did mention it, now that I re-read it. There were many items in the list. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Well, on a whim I just snagged one of these from ye ol' bay. An older model but an upgrade from the $20 transistor tester kit I've been using.

[Mr. Scram]

D'oh! You did mention it, now that I re-read it. There were many items in the list. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Well, on a whim I just snagged one of these from ye ol' bay. An older model but an upgrade from the $20 transistor tester kit I've been using.

I see you bought the last one. I got the second to last one. I've had it's newer but simpler brother on my wish list for a while now, so it was a no-brainer. Shipping adds quite a bit, but that's still a good deal. Now I just need to get me some tweezers.

The sellers ads are quite amusing, I must say. It's like he knows us. "If you don't need it, I HAVE IT !!! (Typically in large quantities.) From my basement to yours... ™"

[bitseeker]

Well, on a whim I just snagged one of these from ye ol' bay. An older model but an upgrade from the $20 transistor tester kit I've been using.

I see you bought the last one. I got the second to last one. I've had it's newer but simpler brother on my wish list for a while now, so it was a no-brainer. Shipping adds quite a bit, but that's still a good deal. Now I just need to get me some tweezers.

Yeah, the C versions are better, but for the price I couldn't hold out.

The sellers ads are quite amusing, I must say. It's like he knows us. "If you don't need it, I HAVE IT !!! (Typically in large quantities.) From my basement to yours... ™"

I wonder if he's been reading our thread.

[Mr. Scram]

Yeah, the C versions are better, but for the price I couldn't hold out.

I wonder if he's been reading our thread.

I was looking to upgrade my cheap LCR meter because it couldn't verify the capacitance of some SMD components before mounting, which basically means I was looking for single pF capabilities. If I interpret the datasheet and other information correctly, this can do two orders of magnitude better. The C version seems to add another order of magnitude, but I can't imagine running into that difference anytime soon. Obviously there's always going to be better gear, but I was eyeing the less capable U1701B for more money, so it's all good. It's way beyond what I have practically needed so far for sure.

[Specmaster]

D'oh! You did mention it, now that I re-read it. There were many items in the list. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Well, on a whim I just snagged one of these from ye ol' bay. An older model but an upgrade from the $20 transistor tester kit I've been using.

I see you bought the last one. I got the second to last one. I've had it's newer but simpler brother on my wish list for a while now, so it was a no-brainer. Shipping adds quite a bit, but that's still a good deal. Now I just need to get me some tweezers.

The sellers ads are quite amusing, I must say. It's like he knows us. "If you don't need it, I HAVE IT !!! (Typically in large quantities.) From my basement to yours... ™"

Maybe is also a fellow TEA member who might be clearing out some of his gear to make space, or just a normal seller and can use his selling to fund his own addiction 

[tggzzz]

Yeah, the C versions are better, but for the price I couldn't hold out.

I wonder if he's been reading our thread.

I was looking to upgrade my cheap LCR meter because it couldn't verify the capacitance of some SMD components before mounting, which basically means I was looking for single pF capabilities. If I interpret the datasheet and other information correctly, this can do two orders of magnitude better. The C version seems to add another order of magnitude, but I can't imagine running into that difference anytime soon. Obviously there's always going to be better gear, but I was eyeing the less capable U1701B for more money, so it's all good. It's way beyond what I have practically needed so far for sure.

Maybe googling for "femto capacitance meter" will give you some ideas

[tggzzz]

Really liking this 2225, more than the Rigol, even though the bandwidth is half as much and it's analogue. x50 zoom is pretty cool. It is quite a good equivalent for delay sweep, at least for repetitive signals/glitch capture.

Feels like a more expensive scope!

Ah, another convert to the light side

(Grins, ducks, and runs)

[Mr. Scram]

Maybe googling for "femto capacitance meter" will give you some ideas

I don't need more ideas about what to spend money on, thank you.