What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[shakalnokturn]

I meant the plastic piece with oval indents before tha banana, it made it look as if it was free to rotate (at least it looks designed to give extra grip for some reason) and may be threaded on the inside.

[Calambres]

Just got this guy:



It works fairly well and quite cheap!.

[mansaxel]

Just got this guy:



It works fairly well and quite cheap!.

I was given the same model, albeit rebranded, as a Christmas gift last year and I concur. I've become a much more competent PCB worker since. It is a repair force multiplier for a very competitive price.

[vk6zgo]

Another bargain.

Pair of used dmm probes.

Robin branded. These ones are gold plated and have 4mm banana plug adapters.

The banana plug part, if not removable, makes the probe unuseable for much work.

I bought a similar set of leads, as they were the only ones available at the time, & found that the thick "banana" part prevented using the probe for such things as checking continuity on flexible cables with connectors/sockets attached, such as microphone cables.

They were also troublesome when looking at the pins on some edge connectors.
I eventually became heartily sick of them, & finally found some normal probes at another supplier.

[rsjsouza]

The banana plug part, if not removable, makes the probe unuseable for much work.

Although I like the concept, it surely can't be your only probe set. Here in the US they are not useable if you need to probe outlets.

[rakanishu]

The Pro'sKit SS-331H is terrific. I've been using it for a year, and boy does it save time compared to even excellent manual desoldering pumps such as the Engineer SS-02. A total godsend if you desolder high effort stuff such as keyboard PCBs.

The only problem is finding spare tips and consumables. I haven't had much luck finding replacements on AliExpress, so I just bit the bullet and bought the replacment gun for $28.

[IDEngineer]

Now that I have a formal desoldering gun (with integrated vacuum pump), I'm angry that I waited so long to get one. I have the Hakko FR-300, and it's expensive for a reason: It's WORTH IT.

My 18YO son, going to university for his EE, is already hooked. He correctly calls it the most valuable tool on our soldering bench.

[Calambres]

The only problem is finding spare tips and consumables. I haven't had much luck finding replacements on AliExpress, so I just bit the bullet and bought the replacment gun for $28.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000348820784.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.85d34f08Vef2W2&algo_pvid=9ff34642-ad15-4da7-814d-b171ed530e1e&algo_expid=9ff34642-ad15-4da7-814d-b171ed530e1e-6&btsid=2100bdf116053783229924576e575c&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_

[McBryce]

The only problem is finding spare tips and consumables. I haven't had much luck finding replacements on AliExpress, so I just bit the bullet and bought the replacment gun for $28.

I think all the relabelled desoldering guns use the same parts. I have a ZD-915 and the tips for those are easy to find:

https://www.amazon.de/Zus%C3%A4tzliche-Spitzen-f%C3%BCr-L%C3%B6tstation-ZD-915/dp/B01AIIF2UG/ref=pd_bxgy_img_2/257-4590955-9801130?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01AIIF2UG&pd_rd_r=da72be71-8072-4a63-bcb9-6297519b847d&pd_rd_w=3R1Fh&pd_rd_wg=aiHt3&pf_rd_p=4490d326-3239-499b-8c8a-0dd8d6ad582a&pf_rd_r=Q3SYH732H3YCYP7FGHDG&psc=1&refRID=Q3SYH732H3YCYP7FGHDG

McBryce.

[rakanishu]

Thank you for the links. Unfortunately, none of them deliver to India. The problem stems from the sheer number of sellers who can't ship to my country due to the pandemic. Hopefully, 2021 would be kinder on us.

[jmh]

Circuit Specialists soldering iron - a treat from some spare cash lumbering in Paypal... I recently moved all my test gear in from the workshop due to humidity and this iron is more 'shack / study i.e. little bedroom' friendly than my reflow station, and it's blue!

[Microdoser]

Heatsinks, fans, highlighter pens, switches, standoffs, self-amalgamating tape, desoldering braid, 6TB hard drive, enamelled magnet winding wire, solder paste.

And a bottle of Plantation Xo 20th Anniversary Rum.

[_Wim_]

And a bottle of Plantation Xo 20th Anniversary Rum.

For flux removal ?   

[basinstreetdesign]

And a bottle of Plantation Xo 20th Anniversary Rum.

For flux removal ?   

Flux removal??  Oh, ...  Yeah, Yeah, that's it.  FLUX REMOVAL!   

[Mr.B]

And a bottle of Plantation Xo 20th Anniversary Rum.

For flux removal ?   

Flux removal??  Oh, ...  Yeah, Yeah, that's it.  FLUX REMOVAL!   

Best for the gentle removal of internal flux.

[Zorc]

Handheld Precision Digital Voltage Source - PDVS2mini

[mansaxel]

A mains cable for my -hp- 400H (Valve AC volt meter made for Europe in then Western Germany, so better connector than that little oval shite they had from the US before everybody went IEC C14).



Finally, I could check it out, and yes, it needs work, but all ranges are there, the movement is free and all valves work.

[Microdoser]

And a bottle of Plantation Xo 20th Anniversary Rum.

For flux removal ?   

Flux removal??  Oh, ...  Yeah, Yeah, that's it.  FLUX REMOVAL!   

Best for the gentle removal of internal flux.

It does a good job of cleaning out the old cobwebs on your internals, that's for sure

[Miyuki]

 
It is old and dirty
But it was really cheap and I am a super cheapskate 

[basinstreetdesign]

Just a bunch of odds and sods that I have been missing for a while: some RG-174, soldering sponges, Y2 caps, switches and a few 0805 R's to help fill out the inventory binder.  I had to place an order for a single $15 chip with DK anyway having smoked the only one I had for my current project.  But SWMBO can't resist getting free shipping so it had to be expanded to $100.   


The original inspiration for the buy?? An AD9833 DDS chip here...

[Calambres]

An early '70s VTVM, the RetexKit VV-1. In fact a clone of the HeathKit V7-A or EM-11E (E for Export).

It was sold as a kit in Spain under license from HeathKit. It is in very good external condition albeit with no probes. I had to make one for DC out of a malfunctioning chinese oscilloscope probe. Some resistors have drifted in value and I'm replacing them to get accuracy in all scales. Also had to tame a bit the power supply circuit as it was designed for 125V / 220V. There's nearly 240V at home and plate voltages are out of spec. I'm having a lot of fun restoring this thing...


[EDIT]: corrected typo.

[Microdoser]

Current sensing transformer, some LM60440DKPR DC-DC chips, various capacitors and resistors needed for the LMs, BNC connectors, RJ45 connectors, Raspberry Pi heatsinks and 30mm fans, roughly 15M of desoldering braid (was really cheap)

[BBBbbb]

Just ordered this one:
https://pine64.com/product-category/soldering-irons/?v=fa6c6ebcea6a

yup I really needed another soldering iron 
But although it might end up being crap, looks quite interesting, and it's quite cheap...

[Nominal Animal]

A Mikrotik RBM33G RouterBOARD, and a two 1.54" IPS panel 240x240 display modules (with a PCB instead of a FFC/FPC cable) from EastRising/BuyDisplay.com.
The RBM33G will be a 4G/LTE router/firewall running OpenWRT, and one of the display modules a small status display for it, hopefully.  (I'll need to write userspace support from scratch.  Note that although the pins are marked SDA/SCL, it uses the typical 4-wire SPI: clock, data, chip select, and command/data.)



I forgot all my serial adapters have TTL level outputs instead of RS-232, so now I'm waiting for my adapter to arrive how much work it is to add the status display; whether the GPIO pins are sufficiently supported by the Linux kernel, or if I have to use a microcontroller in between.

The two top left board sockets on the RBM33G are USB-based mini-PCIe slots for WWAN modems; I'll be using a Huawei ME909s-120.  The one top right is a M.2 NVMe 2242 slot for a PCIe-based SSD, next to an USB 3.0 socket.  On the bottom, you can see the RS-232 serial port and three gigabit ethernet connectors.  I've ordered a Kioxia BG4 128GB 2230 SSD (removed unused from a Dell laptop) as they're known to work with this board, and it was cheap enough; I like to play with this kind of hardware, so I think it'll be useful for me.  An SSD is completely unnecessary for normal router/firewall use; it has 16MiB flash for an OS built-in, and a smaller separate flash for a bootloader.  And 256MiB of RAM, so OpenWRT should run just fine on it.

(Simply put, I got fed up with crappy USB-WWAN adapters, and wanted something really designed for this kind of use.  The USB adapters only have a DC-DC converter from USB 5V to 3.8V, and some passive decoupling capacitors, but even so, the ones I can find are just.. not something I can rely on.  An LDO generates too much heat.  I'm not an EE, and don't trust myself enough to design the board layout using TI TLV62569DBVR buck controller, because of the switchmode EMI, although it'd be near perfect for this use case otherwise.)

[lukego]

Meiji EMZ-8TR microscope with 2.5X camera adapter for my Nikon FX DSLR. Replacement upgrade for my Eakins trinocular microscope head. Hope it's as good as I expect! New from TEquipment.net for the lifetime warranty.