Author Topic: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...  (Read 62988 times)

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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...
« Reply #125 on: January 18, 2025, 12:50:46 am »
Salvage more junk to repair other junk...  The story of my home electronics hobby.   

Replaced the bad encoder on the scrapped LeCroy.   The knobs are blue rather than gray but the same size and I now have a complete set. 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...
« Reply #126 on: January 18, 2025, 01:32:29 am »
The front panel of the previous generation WaveRunner was also made out of plastic but has no cracks at all.  Note their use of metal inserts and how thick the plastic was.  I can see some marketing idiot getting paid seven figures at LeCroy, telling the MEs we need to shave every bit of weight out of this new product that we can.  This is what our customers want.  ME's ran an FEA and said it will crack.  MBAs thought, we will sell more scopes.  Race to the bottom is a hard hole to climb out of.

I wonder if the Siglent 7000 uses metal inserts in their bosses, or did they cheap out. 

Offline tautech

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Re: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...
« Reply #127 on: January 18, 2025, 08:49:07 am »
I wonder if the Siglent 7000 uses metal inserts in their bosses, or did they cheap out.
I would expect metal inserts are again used on the 7000 as they have on many Siglent products.

Based on the pics privately shared, you now know the chassis of the DSO is a major structural component but of course that also requires to be secured to the front panel.

While Defpom didn't do a full teardown of this SDS2104X Plus, you can see the brass inserts clearly.

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Some stuff seen @ Siglent HQ cannot be shared.
 

Online rsjsouza

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Re: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...
« Reply #128 on: January 18, 2025, 11:44:36 am »
The front panel of the previous generation WaveRunner was also made out of plastic but has no cracks at all.  Note their use of metal inserts and how thick the plastic was.  I can see some marketing idiot getting paid seven figures at LeCroy, telling the MEs we need to shave every bit of weight out of this new product that we can.  This is what our customers want.  ME's ran an FEA and said it will crack.  MBAs thought, we will sell more scopes.  Race to the bottom is a hard hole to climb out of.

I wonder if the Siglent 7000 uses metal inserts in their bosses, or did they cheap out.
Maybe worse... seasoned MEs were fed up, left and were replaced by folks that would play ball with the new directives (at half the cost, probably). Also, procurement department was tasked to look for cheaper suppliers of molded (but more brittle) plastic.

At work I don't see a single LeCroy without any sort of visible mechanical problem: knobs missing, cracked sides, etc. They are already rather old, but contemporary equipment from other brands always look much neater. They surely have QA issues for a very long time.
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Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...
« Reply #129 on: January 18, 2025, 04:22:43 pm »
I wonder if the Siglent 7000 uses metal inserts in their bosses, or did they cheap out.
I would expect metal inserts are again used on the 7000 as they have on many Siglent products.

Based on the pics privately shared, you now know the chassis of the DSO is a major structural component but of course that also requires to be secured to the front panel.

While Defpom didn't do a full teardown of this SDS2104X Plus, you can see the brass inserts clearly.

I would have expected LeCroy to use inserts on all of their plastic parts as well.   Maybe in the future Siglent will provided detailed photos of what the 7000 series plastics look like on the inside.  For now, they appear reluctant to provide anything.   I am not really interested in other products Siglent has to offer at this time.   I will say that from physically handling the 3000, it seems solid.   That's just a feeling and have yet to take one apart.  Outside of the Chinese only help, and the little snag with "importing" to save waveforms to memory,  I have not heard anything bad.   

Maybe worse... seasoned MEs were fed up, left and were replaced by folks that would play ball with the new directives (at half the cost, probably). Also, procurement department was tasked to look for cheaper suppliers of molded (but more brittle) plastic.

At work I don't see a single LeCroy without any sort of visible mechanical problem: knobs missing, cracked sides, etc. They are already rather old, but contemporary equipment from other brands always look much neater. They surely have QA issues for a very long time.

We have a lot of Agilent TE from that same era and they have mechanically held up well.   My old Wavemaster's front plastic cover cracked last summer when I removed the dust cover.  From what others have told me, this is a common problem with the Wavemaster and WavePro.     

I don't know anyone that has outfitted a lab with Siglent but would sure like to hear from companies who have.   We currently have that cheap Arb (almost ended all future Siglent purchases) and a few 3000 DSOs.  The DSO's UI and encoders are having zero problems.  Such a contrast from that Arb that couldn't make one encoder work.   

We have not talked about calibration or service yet.   With the large US companies, this was never a problem.   The other difference is when we typically decide to buy TE, the local sales will get involved and do a demo.   With Siglent, we just buy something and try it.

Online rsjsouza

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Re: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...
« Reply #130 on: January 21, 2025, 11:47:32 am »
Maybe worse... seasoned MEs were fed up, left and were replaced by folks that would play ball with the new directives (at half the cost, probably). Also, procurement department was tasked to look for cheaper suppliers of molded (but more brittle) plastic.

At work I don't see a single LeCroy without any sort of visible mechanical problem: knobs missing, cracked sides, etc. They are already rather old, but contemporary equipment from other brands always look much neater. They surely have QA issues for a very long time.

We have a lot of Agilent TE from that same era and they have mechanically held up well.   My old Wavemaster's front plastic cover cracked last summer when I removed the dust cover.  From what others have told me, this is a common problem with the Wavemaster and WavePro.     

I don't know anyone that has outfitted a lab with Siglent but would sure like to hear from companies who have.   We currently have that cheap Arb (almost ended all future Siglent purchases) and a few 3000 DSOs.  The DSO's UI and encoders are having zero problems.  Such a contrast from that Arb that couldn't make one encoder work.
Interesting that you mentioned encoders. I think the biggest offender of the traditional brands is the HP36xx family of power supplies and their garbage encoders. I have had to replace these units multiple times due to bad encoders. I have a VNA or two that also exhibit issues in this regard, but it is much less common.

As for Siglent gear, our lab has a few here and there but they are still too new to exhibit any long term issues.
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Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline joeqsmithTopic starter

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Re: Teledyne LeCroy WaveRunner 64xi, morphed to differential probes...
« Reply #131 on: January 21, 2025, 05:27:13 pm »
Interesting that you mentioned encoders. I think the biggest offender of the traditional brands is the HP36xx family of power supplies and their garbage encoders. I have had to replace these units multiple times due to bad encoders. I have a VNA or two that also exhibit issues in this regard, but it is much less common.

As for Siglent gear, our lab has a few here and there but they are still too new to exhibit any long term issues.

I am not familiar with the HP36xx series.  Assuming its from HP,  it must be fairly old.   In the case of the Siglent, we are talking new, out of the box, garbage.  No fix for it other than suggesting the customer is turning it too fast, or suggesting to use the numeric pad.   I saw a post where someone modified theirs to interface a small microcontroller between the encoder and the Arb to solve it. 

It's one thing to have to repair/maintain old test equipment.  It's another to buy new equipment with such an egregious design flaw. 


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