Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

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For the excess baggage charge - I'd like to see YOUR face!!

[Inverted18650]

For the excess baggage charge - I'd like to see YOUR face!!

I travelled cheap in my youth with surfboards, now-a-days, forget it...better to hit a local shop and buy them in country and just sell them back when you leave.

So from Cali to Hawaii is roughly 4000km, and from Hawaii to AUS is 5600km more...doable

Daydream late, back to work.

[Brumby]

I will rebuy number 1 from you and pay postage to me. I reckon it is worth it Keep going be fearless 

Maybe we can talk later about that.... but remember, I'm looking to build up some capital for Inverted's potential Aussie TEA shipments.   

[Brumby]

Just added another anchor to the collection.  It has specific issues - but the price was right.


Now up to 2....     

[Brumby]

I can just hear the chanting now....

"Go, Brumby, Go!!"

"You can do it!!!!"

 

[beanflying]

$4 USD for a HP High Stability Oscillator wrapped in 3RU of non working device I worth a go an call it a win You understand we expect a thread and photos of the bruises from SHMBO 

[tautech]

I wonder if I can afford a boat big enough to make the trip myself..or maybe a plane...now that would be an adventure. Where there is a will, there is a way. I suppose I could check a pallet at the gate for an INT'L flight....Id love to see there faces!

"Sir, the board bag and 4 surf boards we understand, as you are headed to Australia, but what is all this other stuff that looks like you may be repairing the plane in mid-air"

Really, find a international freight forwarder, they'll get a pallet into a shared container to pretty much any destination where it'll be taken to a customs bond container unpacker and the recipient needs to get the shipment/pallet cleared and pay any import charges.
Then armed with the clearance paperwork you/recipient just rocks up to the container unpacker and claim your goodies.

These freight forwarders generally have a worldwide group of guys they work with....it's just that you might have to ship/truck it to their packing facility near some container terminal. The busy terminals have containers bound for all sorts of destinations on a daily basis. Sometimes there's a small wait until there's a ship bound for some destination and they generally have several ports to call on, on their way to you.
When I do seafreight from Shenzhen it generally takes ~4 weeks with only ~22 days in actual transit, presumably calling on other ports on their way to little ol' NZ.

Some little idea of cost, yeah there are some packing and port charges but the seafreight itself is ridiculously cheap.
1.25 M³, 125KG............$95 NZD = ~ USD60

[mnementh]

In Other News... Bang-em-good banged me good.
            
KSGER Stainless Steel FX-9501 T12 Soldering Iron Handle; $38 from Banggood

"Item NOT As described, defective, not even correct brand. Very disappointed. Please refund immediately."
1 - Arrived with messed up cable visible from outside. This does not bode well. 
2 - Cable strain relief messed up; this is what I found after unwrapping. Will need to be completely rewired correctly so cable is affixed inside. grrr. 
3 - Can't even get a cartridge into it any further than this. I almost broke the tip trying to get it past old, hard oversized o-ring inside. Just the tip, man. 
4 - Some off-brand product, NOT KSGER. 
5 - NOT Stainless steel. Magnetic, rusty, just plain cheap chromed steel tube. Utterly unmitigated piece of shit. Nice & skinny grip, though.

Very disappointing. No idea where they got this piece of shit, but this borders on bait & switch. We'll see what they offer. If they demand a video, I'll tell them to go suck a duck and have PayPal handle it.

mnem
Banggood, whatcha doin' widdat duuuuuck?

"Bang-em-good" Bogus KSGER Stainless T12 Handle Revisited:

            

The promised refund went through as expected, so I decided to take a break from my case modding project and had a look at this shiny little turd.

First thing I discovered is that what prevented insertion of a tip was just a stupidly overthick nitrile rubber o-ring. I removed that and found that pretty much all the guts relied on a little bit of glued glass-fiber tubing to hold things together. I tried putting a T12 tip in it, and wound up pushing all the guts out the back end. 

After looking the bits over, I discovered it uses a T12 cartridge socket that is different from any I've seen before. This one has a split-ring type contact on the SHELL GND connection; it makes contact with a very satisfying click. The two cartridge power contacts appear to be made of heavier gauge metal than any I've seen elsewhere too. 

So after scratching my head a few minutes, I contrived to just drill and tap the tube and this little hole in the T12 socket for a m2.5 x 4mm set screw. Drilling and tapping took but a few minutes; then I discovered my stash of m2.5 grub screws from my RC helicopter daze had been magically replaced with M3, which were just unreasonably oversized.   

So I scrounged a m2.5 socket head screw, and fabricated a set screw with my Dremel and a thin cutoff wheel. Hey! Now there's actually a tiny little bit of stainless steel in it!  But alas, the damned thing STILL was not genuine KSGER, so it wasn't wired correctly for my station. However, I found they did at least follow the color code common to most of the aftermarket T12 kit on the market, so all I had to do was move the red, black & blue wires at the plug to where they belong. Ka-Ching!  A little heat-shrink tubing as a strain-relief so the plug matched the handle and we were good to go.

I found that the thin profile of the handle allowed it to just fall through to the plastic base on the original RS iron stand, so I had to dust off the old cast aluminum stand from my Aoyue. It cleaned up respectably well, though. 

As a test I decided to give it some heavy gauge steel wire to chew on and made myself a new alligator wire organizer. 

I've seen a lot of things made for organizing your alligators, and most LOOK a lot better than an old coathanger... but none I've found actually WORK better. The hook and slim profile lets you hang it off a nail in a wall up out of the way, yet when you need it close you can hang it from your shelving or the edge of your desk. The second string of MIG wire is the right diameter to not damage your j-hook and grabber-style clips too; plus it lets you sort into "alligator both ends" on the lower level, and other types elsewhere. I have several "solder-in" wires I like to clip up at the top by the hook.

Anyways... for the MIG wire to work right here it needs to be pulled and held taut; this requires that it be soldered. A perfect test for my new handle; I plugged in the T12-BC4 "hoof-tip" I use for drag-soldering and cranked up the heat to 360°C. That and a little rosin on the end of my solder made short work of the shellac on the coathanger wire; after one end cooled I pulled the other end taut and held it in place with hemostats while I soldered that section. 

If you decide to play along at home and make your own, be sure to let it cool off before you handle it; unlike the TinkerDwagon you probably aren't fireproof!!! 

Final verdict?   

In all honesty, this handle has a great feel; the grip is thin, the balance is perfect, and it takes just a little work to sort it 100%. I'd gladly pay $15 for this over $7-12 for the plastic FX9501 handle; just NOT $38 when I'm expecting stainless steel and plug & play with my KSGER station. Keep your eyes open to see if BG comes to their senses and reprices the thing appropriately.

mnem
*TEA-ily*

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HP 8656B Signal Generator
Condition: For parts or not working
Description: Powers ON but has unknown faults. Case has some scrapes.
   
AUD $51.00


HP 8656B Signal Generator
Condition: For parts or not working
Description: Does NOT power ON, has unknown faults. Case has some scrapes. Some parts have been removed.
 
AUD $5.50

[Brumby]

Yes - I have Bean to blame thank.

[beanflying]

Happy to have nudged you over the edge of the hole and into the chasm below. 0-3 HP boxes in a week let me find you next weeks

[Brumby]

I've contacted the Seller for a pickup tomorrow morning.  Will be good if I can.  I'll be two thirds of the way there for an appointment, so it will only be a small detour to get there.

Also means I don't have to make an excuse for a trip - and the units can easily fit in my boot.  Just need to sneak them inside at some point.....   

Fingers crossed.

[Brumby]

Yes ... It's ON!  (I will post if SWMBO notices or not ......    )

I looked up the address and found the company.  They do work for some organisations that will have confidentiality constraints.   Be nice if this gear is on Keysight's recovery list.....   Yeah, I know, I'm dreamin'.

[Inverted18650]

SIC...take two make one? For $5 who cares.

[VK5RC]

 
snip

But that right there is definitely on the far side of The Far Side, even for me, especially when confused with slang from my youth, where "wookie" meant "a woman with a thick, nearly impenetrable bush" due to association with the meme above. Leia was a favorite subject of sexual humor; she still is among certain circles, and this association is especially pervy if you've seen the way she seems to be gazing longingly up at Chewie during several scenes in the Star Wars Christmas Special. 

So "no wookies" has a VERY specific meaning to me and to a lot of people I grew up with; it might even be considered anti-feminist in some circumstances.

mnem

'chuckles to self'
I can understand that!
Amazing how local slang is.

[Inverted18650]

about this new (to me) 5440A:

Does anyone have experience with these units, specifically the 0V settings. I haven't reached that part in the manual and wonder if it has both mechanical and digital zero. I have not opened the unit, as there seems to be no need, with the worst range setting being the 100mV range @ 6.9µV pk/pk, followed by the 1V @ 6.5µV pk/pk, and then it drops down below 5µV on the other ranges. So on the low end, it almost seems the calibrator is out of spec, but I wonder if its a zero fault or if the unit has drifted due to a hardware fault. Ill run the exact error sequence for the 7510 and see what results it gives shortly.

But when the output is not enabled, I get about 0.2xxxmV of noise on the meter, which quickly fades as I enable the output above 100mV. However it may explain the slightly different reading I am getting on the cal'd 7510. Maybe I need to NULL out the leads on the lower level settings?

Any thoughts?

[beanflying]

Capacitance/Inductance in your leads and a GigOhm input on the Keithley I would hazard a guess rather than an issue with the 5440A. There may also be some components after the enable on the 5440A?

Turn off any Switchmode Supplies (in particular), Wallwarts, LED lights and or anything else possibly noisy and check again.

[Inverted18650]

Capacitance/Inductance in your leads and a GigOhm input on the Keithley I would hazard a guess rather than an issue with the 5440A. There may also be some components after the enable on the 5440A?

Turn off any Switchmode Supplies (in particular), Wallwarts, LED lights and or anything else possibly noisy and check again.

You nailed it, thanks mate!

I am monitoring the 0.100mV range and unplugged and moved the laptop I am typing on and it made a big difference. I am silly enough to forget my setup in the breakfast nook is not ideal for these low level measurements...I think I scored a winner but I will put this setup in the shop room tomorrow with proper test leads and confirm. No overhead noise...D'OH!

edit** even turning these lights out was noticable...damnit Chris, get it together ...lol

[tautech]

about this new (to me) 5440A:

Does anyone have experience with these units, specifically the 0V settings. I haven't reached that part in the manual and wonder if it has both mechanical and digital zero. I have not opened the unit, as there seems to be no need, with the worst range setting being the 100mV range @ 6.9µV pk/pk, followed by the 1V @ 6.5µV pk/pk, and then it drops down below 5µV on the other ranges. So on the low end, it almost seems the calibrator is out of spec, but I wonder if its a zero fault or if the unit has drifted due to a hardware fault. Ill run the exact error sequence for the 7510 and see what results it gives shortly.

But when the output is not enabled, I get about 0.2xxxmV of noise on the meter, which quickly fades as I enable the output above 100mV. However it may explain the slightly different reading I am getting on the cal'd 7510. Maybe I need to NULL out the leads on the lower level settings?

Any thoughts?

Really ? 

First would be ripple on the PSU with the low ranges most susceptible, one would think. Wouldn't you ?

[Inverted18650]

about this new (to me) 5440A:

Does anyone have experience with these units, specifically the 0V settings. I haven't reached that part in the manual and wonder if it has both mechanical and digital zero. I have not opened the unit, as there seems to be no need, with the worst range setting being the 100mV range @ 6.9µV pk/pk, followed by the 1V @ 6.5µV pk/pk, and then it drops down below 5µV on the other ranges. So on the low end, it almost seems the calibrator is out of spec, but I wonder if its a zero fault or if the unit has drifted due to a hardware fault. Ill run the exact error sequence for the 7510 and see what results it gives shortly.

But when the output is not enabled, I get about 0.2xxxmV of noise on the meter, which quickly fades as I enable the output above 100mV. However it may explain the slightly different reading I am getting on the cal'd 7510. Maybe I need to NULL out the leads on the lower level settings?

Any thoughts?

Really ? 

First would be ripple on the PSU with the low ranges most susceptible, one would think. Wouldn't you ?

Ill show you in a moment. A video may be better but Ill try with pics...even the lights binged me 800nV.

[beanflying]

This goes into some other sources but basically Shhhhh for low voltage and or ground the probes and it will go away. Last time I was running some drift tests on my 515A Calibrator I moved it and the two meters away fro the bench and most of the noise and it was noticeably better on the last count with less bouncing https://www.testandmeasurementtips.com/avoid-errors-low-voltage-measurements/

[Inverted18650]

The breakfast nook is close to the door for the backyard, which the dog is always in and out of, and because its cold out I can actually see those effects as well. This meter is so sensitive, its insane; it is truly a physics level meter. Upstairs is more controlled but shit guys, even down here like this, its pretty damn sweet. Going on the record and saying this is my best buy for 2019 (so far) and I am writing that in PEN.

That being said, its still higher than it should be on the other ranges, SO we will see tomorrow if there are adjustments to be made or if its just noise. I will get the braided pair with proper t-copper spades out and do it right. I can handle tweaking a couple pots to compensate for long term drift becasue I have the records now to go with the unit.

[beanflying]

Just for fun 34401A Gigohm input unterminated leads. Managed to get it to trigger the 10V relay a few times

[Inverted18650]

mines set to 10M..

[beanflying]

So you have a really noisy house then    Setup like photo 1 on 10M still gets me a nearly a -.1-0.3 mV with the counter and sig gen off.