Products > Test Equipment

I am building brand new, 5K$ lab for a small startup, Judge my choices

<< < (4/6) > >>

mmame:
I don't get it: why should spending below 10k USD be "not serious"? As we don't know what he's going to build, we can't really tell him how much hwe "shall" spend.

I was in a similar situation around 12 years ago: a SW company but we needed some "simple" hardware for a SW project (low voltage and current, low component count, no RF stuff...). Bought a Rigol Oscilloscope for less than 1200, lab power supply was an ancient selfmade one from home, prototype PCB's were soldered in an old frying pan...

Of course, i.e. for EMI pre-tests, we had to go to a lab but finally everything was up and running - and certified ;-)

As said: it depends on the specific requirements.

Martin72:
What I imagine a "laboratory" to be:

- Oscilloscope
- Spectrum analyzer
- Signal generator
- Multimeter, several
- Supplies, several
- Loads, multiple
- Soldering station
- Rework station
- Reflow oven
- Microscope
- Thermal camera
- Current clamp, one stand-alone, one for the oscilloscope
- Tools in general, tweezers, pliers, circuit board holder, etc
- Test leads
- Work lights

If you can manage all that for 5000, respect.

nctnico:
Agreed. When I went from a job to being self deployed and needed my equipment to make money for me full-time, I quickly found out that my lab was not up to the job. I needed to make some serious investments to get projects out of the door in a quick & efficient way. For essential tools like oscilloscope, PSU, soldering iron, hot air and DMM make sure to have spare/extra units so you are not in a jam if an essential tools fails.

Although I would scratch the reflow oven and rework station from the list. Doing in-house PCB assembly is not a good idea from an investment (equipment + time) and quality perspective.

Martin72:
We have something like this in order to be able to quickly implement any changes to externally assembled circuit boards, of course you have to calculate what is worthwhile and when.

PlainName:

--- Quote ---I have an unique opportunity to get “tabula rasa” lab. To build it from scratch. I will list what I think of each instrument and why I decided to go with it.
--- End quote ---

I would suggest that you get the specific stuff you know you want/need and that will work for you, and the other... well, cheap means you buy twice, but if you buy the wrong expensive tool you're stuck with something you don't like and is hard to replace. So I would buy something that seems reasonably capable but is cheap enough to lose, and from that find out what you really want.

For instance, if you were buying a thermal image (which, BTW, is good for bringing up prototypes, not just repairs) one of the features that isn't obvious to a new user is the ability to manually set the temperature range. Most cheap and mid-range TICs don't have that but get recommended because of.. well, there must be something that appeals to the opinion provider. Get a cheap one and find out these things like this, and when you get the expensive replacement you know exactly the feature set you want.

Similarly, I've bought recommended expensive kit and regretted it because something is the way someone else likes stuff, not me, and it sits unused.

Your microscope may be a good example. I know some people manage with them (and, after all, Alex at Northridge uses just a pimped one), but the only way to find out how bad it is for you is to try it. It's cheap enough to do that and I bet you'll pretty soon go for an optical one, and a Barlow lens would be a feature you need.

The downside of going this route is that it takes a bit of time to figure out what's good and what isn't, so rather than diving in and hitting it running you'll be slow-starting every new thing you're doing. But you'd need to learn to use the tools (and which tools) anyway, so perhaps there's not that much difference.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod