Whats your Work-Bench/lab look like? Post some pictures of your Lab.

[xrunner]

Nice equipment. So the top of your bench is a metal grounded plate? Interesting. 

[Teti]

Nice equipment. So the top of your bench is a metal grounded plate? Interesting. 

Yeah I was just thinking the same, TE and lab is just super sweet, but those surfaces must cause some serious fatigue.
We used to have clean room with stainless steel bench top with clear hood and It was very uncomfortable to work on it for even few hours straight. Nice ESD mats would make a difference IMO.

[Teti]

Hello guys,

Thought I would share some images of my home lab workspace with you, there are some great use of spaces on this thread and some ingenious ideas that I would have never thought!
I feel that my work space is easy to use and laid out well for those big boned among us 

Really pleased with the JBC soldering equipment it's just so nice to use, with their superb range of tips and package removal tools plus the custom design service, should have looked at this brand years ago, but hey hidsight is wonderful thing.

We are geared up for specilist power supply design & build, audio and the odd green energy project, so a lot of the equipment is centred around these areas.

It has taken around two and half years to bring the home lab up to this standard, like everyone else you seek the best deals for your needs.

Between here and the works lab:

Scopes: Lecroy Wavepro 254 4Ghz, Lecory MDA8020 2Ghz, Lecroy HDO6000A (B model due soon) 500Mhz Lecroy Wavesurfer 4000HD 200Mhz, Rigol MSO8000 2.3Ghz (Tv84 enhanced)

Forteen Lecroy probes and eight Rigol probes both brands with fully digital probe looms as well.

RF work: Rigol RSA 5065 TG (TV84 enhanced), Siglent SVA 1015X, Agilent VSA E4433B 4Ghz

DC LISN x2, LISN mate, AC LISN, RF Current probes, full range of RF EMC sniffer probes and three rf amplifiers, various antenna’s RF dummy loads X3 various sizes, various attenuators and transient limiters. Impedance convertors and VSWR bridge 8Ghz

Signal generators: Tek AFG31000 250Mhz 2G/s, Rigol DG822 (TV84 enhanced) 100 Mhz, Rhode & Schwartz APN-62 low frequency unit 0Hz-260Khz

Power analysers: Tektronix PA1000, Keysight N6705C, (two modules Precision 17amp 60V psu and sink) two Lecroy RP4030 rail probes and two cp030A (1ma resolution current probes)

Power supplies: Keysight E36313A, Temma 30V 10amp cheapy but robust daily driver, Kikusui PCR500M a/c supply, a quality variac 10 amps 240Vac. Plus various ultra low 5 amp 16ua ripple current custom construction linear units.

DC loads: GW Instek PEL-3031E: Keysight EL34243A dual load, plus various constructed passive loads ranging pto 20 amps, these are so much quieter tha the active loads for EMC work

Reference refernce clock system 10Mhz ultra low phase noise -122dbc@1hz Mutec SE-120

Audio analyser Rhode & Schwartz UPV66 with ALL options (curtesy of TV84) except the ultra low singal generator which I could puchase a DMM7510 for the same cost!!!

Multi meters: Keithley DMM7510, Keithley DMM6500 Fluke 115

LCR devices Microtest 6366 500khz precision LCR meter with various adapters, Peak LCR45 and Peak Atas Pro DCA75 device tester

Soldering: JBC DDE 2 tools precision tweezers and de-soldering station, C2EV10 soldering station around 30 tips of various configuration.

Flir E8 infra-red camera.

A lot of T flex 405 cabling both N type and BNC terminations, plus more bench test power leads than I can shake a stick at which have been made up over the years.

Only a couple of changes planned, a new 12 GHZ VNA and another DC load.

The lab is used most day's is a great environment to work in.

Thanks for reading

This lab should be 18+ only, cos this is some serious TE porn going on here 

[KG7AMV]

June 2021 Added a Siglent SDM3065X DMM



When you Organize the Programmer Cabinet.

[szszoke]

June 2021 Added a Siglent SDM3065X DMM



When you Organize the Programmer Cabinet.

Just out of curiosity, what do you do with so many soldering irons?

Are you using all of them?

[KG7AMV]

szszoke, Some times I have 3 going at once.

I also have 2 more FM-202's and a 937 the cabinet also! LOL Who's a Pack Rat?

And Getting Lazy..

https://youtu.be/CxFOwWqzLEA 

[med6753]

Just out of curiosity, what do you do with so many soldering irons?

Are you using all of them?

You must be new here.  One cannot have too many DMM's, counters, scopes, generators, or soldering irons. 

[Ed.Kloonk]

Just out of curiosity, what do you do with so many soldering irons?

Are you using all of them?

You must be new here.  One cannot have too many DMM's, counters, scopes, generators, or soldering irons. 

One iron for each hand. Balancing your feet up on the bench can be tricky. Mind the solder splash.

[szszoke]

Just out of curiosity, what do you do with so many soldering irons?

Are you using all of them?

You must be new here.  One cannot have too many DMM's, counters, scopes, generators, or soldering irons. 

Indeed I am!

I could imagine scenarios where I would want to set up a test jig or leave instruments running overnight for some task and do something else in the meantime but I couldn't imagine something similar for soldering irons.

[szszoke]

szszoke, Some times I have 3 going at once.

I also have 2 more FM-202's and a 937 the cabinet also! LOL Who's a Pack Rat?

And Getting Lazy..

https://youtu.be/CxFOwWqzLEA

Nice!

[Bud]

There may be reasons for having more than one soldering iron. Even if i have a hot air station, in some cases i use two soldering irons to remove stubborn SMTs. Also, regardless of quick tips swap capabilities, it is convenient to just have two soldering irons with different tip sizes or shapes.

[PA0PBZ]

There may be reasons for having more than one soldering iron. Even if i have a hot air station, in some cases i use two soldering irons to remove stubborn SMTs. Also, regardless of quick tips swap capabilities, it is convenient to just have two soldering irons with different tip sizes or shapes.

Also, how are you going to repair your only soldering iron? 

[szszoke]

There may be reasons for having more than one soldering iron. Even if i have a hot air station, in some cases i use two soldering irons to remove stubborn SMTs. Also, regardless of quick tips swap capabilities, it is convenient to just have two soldering irons with different tip sizes or shapes.

I guess that makes sense if you do a lot of soldering.

[KG7AMV]

I guess that makes sense if you do a lot of soldering.

Some of us do a lot of solder work!!

[szszoke]

I guess that makes sense if you do a lot of soldering.

Some of us do a lot of solder work!!

What does your average day look like in your lab?

[nudge]

Not your standard bench, but living in a small apartment means i don't have the luxury of having a garage to tinker in!

For fun I DJ and design audio electronics and do the odd repair for friends (dj mixers, guitar amps, effects units, etc). You can find some of the things I do in my signature

[lapm]

Ok here's my "lab" in corner of room. Not much but big improvement from last year.

After yeas of considering it got myself Rigol DS-1054Z to complement that Hitachi analog scope i already have. And finally got lab power supply that actually has current limit.

Soldering station is actually Thermaltronics TMT-2000S-K. Got to try one in Hacklab and was like, i need to upgrade from that 70 € cheap one i have. Just station was about 200 € on discount and then i bought selection of tips for it in two temperature ranges.

Hacklab is poison to my wallet. Its hard to ignore better equipment once you get to try it and see what it can do.

[benpro-95]

Here my rolling electronics tool cabinet lab, works great living in a small one bedroom apartment I store it away when not in use. I build audio equipment, home automation and lighting systems in my spare time, and do z/OS COBOL software development as my day job.

[xrunner]

Here my rolling electronics tool cabinet lab, works great living in a small one bedroom apartment I store it away when not in use. I build audio equipment, home automation and lighting systems in my spare time, and do z/OS COBOL software development as my day job.

I like it.

COBOL, oh I didn't even know that was still in use, but I don't get out much. 

[benpro-95]

Thank you!! and I work at a bank its still heavily used by most financial institutions it works great for processing huge amounts of text data quickly.

[xrunner]

Thank you!! and I work at a bank its still heavily used by most financial institutions it works great for processing huge amounts of text data quickly.

Yea I was just now checking out its modern usage because of your mention of it. Seems that it's going strong and will outlive us, according to what I'm reading. 

[McBryce]

I know a few COBOL programmers. They are all relatively old and earn a fortune because the script-kiddies falling out of university these days haven't learnt anything about COBOL in their studies So COBOL programmers are becoming very rare.

McBryce.

[Howardlong]

I know a few COBOL programmers. They are all relatively old and earn a fortune because the script-kiddies falling out of university these days haven't learnt anything about COBOL in their studies So COBOL programmers are becoming very rare.

McBryce.

COBOL was the only exam I failed at university back in the mid 80s, which was a bit of a come down as I was quite a wizz at Pascal and assembly language. I never went to any of the COBOL lectures except for the first one. Unfortunately, I didn't realise it was an open book exam. I crammed in the 24 hours before the exam, including how to write all the boilerplate cruft from my head (there's an awful lot of it in COBOL), but failed to answer the questions in the way the lecturer wanted, although my code worked. It was simple stuff too, looping formatting etc.

As it was an EE course, I couldn't see the point of doing COBOL, especially as C was at that time very much in vogue and still in its ascendancy. Many lecturers just churn out the same crappy course they've been doing for a decade for undergrads.

"Je ne regrette rien", as Edith Piaf said rather more than once.

Little did I know that as an EE, a good deal of my career has also been tackling enterprise grade RDBMS. It's always good to have multiple strings to your bow.

[beanflying]

Odd they would throw COBOL into an EE stream 

When I went through the Engineering Stream did Pascal and Fortran while the Computer mob went Pascal COBOL for opening languages. We then went on to such delights as programming 6800 Micros in Hex on a keypad 

[xrunner]

Odd they would throw COBOL into an EE stream 

When I went through the Engineering Stream did Pascal and Fortran while the Computer mob went Pascal COBOL for opening languages. We then went on to such delights as programming 6800 Micros in Hex on a keypad 

Oh yea FORTRAN classes here too but how about DEC PDP-11 assembly? Fun times, but we digress from the thread title.