Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Ok... so I just went looking for a user manual for that RS Pro clamp. They didn't have one, which is annoying, but the meter is a current stock item, and the price is a bit more than the £15.48 (shipped) that I paid...

Your not kidding its loads more expensive, you jammy git 

No point chasing RS for a manual, go direct to the makers, here is the link you require. https://www.prova.com.tw/product_detail.asp?seq=6

[mnementh]

      Here's a blast from the past for ya, Tautech.
I curb-scored this in the spring; it got buried in the back of the back shed without even being triaged. So today I'm taking a few hours to check it out; decide if I need to fix it or flip it.

So far things are promising; found the flywheel crusted onto the brake band, and the usual clippings that collect between the gas tank and cylinder/crankcase but little else horrifying. Gas even smells halfway potent, and nothing in the tank but a few blades of pickled grass; I just cleaned the flywheel and brake band with a wire wheel & did the "blow everything out with my hand over the carb" dance, and now hunting a deep-well socket for the spark plug.

mnem
Pray for me out in the "dog days" suck!

OMG why do they even need such things......mowers cut things so keep your furking toes and fingers away !

Yep go a 4hp similar that I need to finish shoehorning a CDI onto......nearly 40 yrs old and was a points model but not done much work so still should have a turn or 2 left in it yet.

It lives! The spark plug was pretty crusty (I think it was OEM; still had the half-masked-off black paint on the metal); cleaned it with my pocket knife and a bit of methanol, then a squirt of meth down the carb throat and it popped right off, first pull. A couple more snorts and then I was able to keep it running by pumping the primer bulb, then on with the air cleaner and it just runs!

Total cost: $0.00 and a couple hours out in the suck.

It's a mowin' little mutherfucker, it is! Not as much torque as the ol' 6.5 (ft-lbs) Tecumseh-powered MTD for sure, but I put the wheels on #3 instead of my usual #2 (Hey, I'm a old, fat bastard and yeah, sometimes I scalp it but fuck mowing... ) and it handled the deep shag-grass we have in the back yard just fine.

I did stall it a couple times chopping up dropped branches into smaller bits (yeah, I'm that asshole too; it's a tool and it's gonna work for me, not the other way around gawddammitt ), but it restarted first pull. 

One thing it has over the 6.5 MTD that I really like: a normal throttle so you can let it cool down at idle and temp equalize for a few minutes before you shut it down; if there's one thing I hate it's riding a engine hard and putting it away hot & angry.

You know, I usedta agree with this... until I handed the mower off to my own 12-year-old son. Now... gawdammit, I insist that he does not flystrap the dead-man the way I do sometimes, like for cooling down and taking that pic. Whaddaya know. 

Anyhoo... there was a point to all this. The biggest thing this mower has over the 6.5 MTD is it doesn't sound like it's aboot to throw a rod; when I bought the MTD for $25 I knew it was on its last legs with a bit of a rod knock, and I got 2 good summers out of it.

The new place has a little postage stamp of a yard with a patio that I could keep tamed with a weedeater if I had to... I think I'm gonna accidentally forget the 6.5 MTD (and the parts mower) in the shed here and keep this one. It's not self-propelled, but that means it weighs like nothing... I can push it around with one hand and barely even notice it. 

Simplify, says I. 

mnem

[tautech]

Yep despite their simple engineering B&S just keep on running but on one condition.....keep changing the engine oil !
If it looks dirty change it ! If you can't remember when you last did...change it !
FFS it's only a pint and it won't break the bank. 

[mnementh]

"Oil/grease is cheaper than metal." ~grand-dad

mnem
 

[bd139]

electric ones are cheaper than all that shit 

[mansaxel]

"Oil/grease is cheaper than metal." ~grand-dad

mnem
 

Here it's "Noone ever lubricated himself into poverty"

[Specmaster]

@vk6zgo
I was reading in a Covid report that Bourke Shire Council in New South Wales in Australia have shot dead rescue dogs in their care in an effort to control Covid-19,  The WHO says that dogs and cats cannot catch or therefore transmit Covid-19 so what were they thinking? According to the report, one of those had just given birth as well. Your government has allegedly lunched an investigation 

[mansaxel]

electric ones are cheaper than all that shit 

And they don't stink. My children are sane people. They've never experienced the Old Bad Times when there was no pollution control on engines. All their lives, there's been catalysts on nearly all internal combustion engines around them. Consequently, they're not thrown back into nostalgia if we're stuck behind a 70s car, they're nauseous.

The complete absence of pollution control on small petrol engines (mowers, mopeds, motorbikes et al. There's a special level in hell for 2-stroke ones, at that.) is probably not the largest environment problem we've got, but it is still one, and we're better off without it.

[med6753]

Been there, done that. For many, many years. Now it's let the landlord mow the lawn. Fuck that. 

[mnementh]

electric ones are cheaper than all that shit 

And they don't stink. My children are sane people. They've never experienced the Old Bad Times when there was no pollution control on engines. All their lives, there's been catalysts on nearly all internal combustion engines around them. Consequently, they're not thrown back into nostalgia if we're stuck behind a 70s car, they're nauseous.

The complete absence of pollution control on small petrol engines (mowers, mopeds, motorbikes et al. There's a special level in hell for 2-stroke ones, at that.) is probably not the largest environment problem we've got, but it is still one, and we're better off without it.

Oh, yes... Lithium electrolyte and the chemicals used to make it are so much better than a few minutes a month of hydrocarbon exhaust. Which you're just changing where that exhaust comes from; a single small engine or a huge power plant, as most of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuel.

Oh, and then we have carbon-footprint of those factories in China with zero scrubbers, nor the power plants running them, and the strip-mining effluent getting all the raw materials...

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Most of the modern corded or battery-op yard-care shit on the market is just that: The cheapest possible plastic shit. It's not even made of decent plastic, and the design life is measured in months, not years or decades like a old B&S engine.

They've just found another market for shit that's e-waste the day it's made.

Oh, and bd... have you priced a electric lawnmower recently...? They're fuxxoring expensive!!!

Certainly nowhere near as cheap as "free off the curb". 

mnem
 

[tautech]

The complete absence of pollution control on small petrol engines (mowers, mopeds, motorbikes et al. There's a special level in hell for 2-stroke ones, at that.) is probably not the largest environment problem we've got, but it is still one, and we're better off without it.

Yeah well how do you control which 2 stroke lubricant gets used in such motors....you can't !
When I was a kid proper 2 stoke oils were a rarity and most everything ran on 1/2 pint of SAE 30 to the gal and it smoked like one SOB.
Even today when we still have air and water cooled 2 strokes the lube requirements for each is vastly different however we have totally synthetic lubricants that barely emit any smoke IF administered at the correct ratio.

And that's half the problem.....using the correct 2 stroke lube and at the correct ratio. 
Most 2 stroke owners have just one type and try and use it for everything and often at a single mix ratio so to simplify fueling 2 strokes and lower the risk of one of them running too lean on oil.

Although significant advances have been made in the last decade or so with self tuning electronic carbies in some effort to reduce pollution.

However there's something else to ponder on, when a 4 stroke wears and its oils rings fail to adequately control oil usage it's just as bad if not worse than a 2 stroke !

[Vince]

There is a $7 SMT assembly set up fee and $1.50 for the stencil, but there is often a special offer or a coupon to reduce or remove that.

They charge $0.0015  per solder connection  -  which is almost nothing.

Basic parts like 0805 resistors,  1N4148s  are a few cents each.  78L05 is a dime and  the basic part Tantalum capacitors are about 20 cents. 

Any time you use an 'extended' part there is a one time $3.00 fee.    You also have to buy a minium quantity of the part because the pick and place machine eats that many even if you only use five.

For this board, it was about the same cost to use the SMT assembly service compared to buying the parts from RS.     I made a couple of design changes to use as many basic parts as possible.    Bottom board is how they came from JLC - Top is a completed one.   It cost about $74 for ten, including the PCB,  20% UK VAT and FedEx IP shipping.     (Would have been $20 less if I had not used FedEx.)

Thanks (again) for this example... So 74 minus 20 for cheaper shipping, 54 USD still including shipping and taxes. That's like I do'nt know, 35 EUros, for 10 boards of a decent size, PCB + parts + soldering, 3.5 Euros per board all in... I am in ! 
And looks like you were abel to cherry pick what components you wanted them to assemble and which one they should leave to you. So you can get them to do all the cheap stuff and do yourself only the components taht would be too expensive via JLC. So you can really fine tune the production of the PCB to make it as cheap as possible, wonderful ! 

Looks like this JLC thingy is really trying to push the limits to get the entire worldwide market of hobbyist for themselves ! 

Western PCB houses will have to find creative ways to respond to that or they will soon die... the can't compete on price. So they will need to find niche markets and use cases that JLC is not already addressing.   I don't know, cheap 48H delivery, something really valuable like this that JLC just will never be able to do.

It's cool to the PCB houses fighting every year to give us always more for less money, love it !! 

[mnementh]

The complete absence of pollution control on small petrol engines (mowers, mopeds, motorbikes et al. There's a special level in hell for 2-stroke ones, at that.) is probably not the largest environment problem we've got, but it is still one, and we're better off without it.

Yeah well how do you control which 2 stroke lubricant gets used in such motors....you can't !
When I was a kid proper 2 stoke oils were a rarity and most everything ran on 1/2 pint of SAE 30 to the gal and it smoked like one SOB.
Even today when we still have air and water cooled 2 strokes the lube requirements for each is vastly different however we have totally synthetic lubricants that barely emit any smoke IF administered at the correct ratio.

And that's half the problem.....using the correct 2 stroke lube and at the correct ratio. 
Most 2 stroke owners have just one type and try and use it for everything and often at a single mix ratio so to simplify fueling 2 strokes and lower the risk of one of them running too lean on oil.

Although significant advances have been made in the last decade or so with self tuning electronic carbies in some effort to reduce pollution.

However there's something else to ponder on, when a 4 stroke wears and its oils rings fail to adequately control oil usage it's just as bad if not worse than a 2 stroke !

And then the question comes of just how clean is the power you're running an electric motor with. Deregulation has above all other pursuits benefited Big Energy; oil spills and natural gas contamination of water reserves are a constant thing, watchdog groups are constantly finding this or that power plant bypassing scrubbers or  running without them completely and just paying token fines indefinitely, because they can lawyer the fines down to nothing... your electricity comes with a massive Karmic asshole tax unless you generate it all yourself with solar, and then you have the Karmic asshole tax of all the heavy industry and rare earth metals used to make those panels and the electronics and...

Well, you get the idea. I for one am not convinced that powering a mower (or a car, for that matter) from electricity with all the losses involved is necessarily less carbon footprint than powering it directly from a small gas engine; every step you remove from the actual generation of the HP to do work is a nearly geometric actual decrease in efficiency overall.

Remember; ultimately, ALL energy on the planet is solar in origin.

mnem
 

[bd139]

My mower is mostly wind powered on a saturday afternoon

[Saskia]

The complete absence of pollution control on small petrol engines (mowers, mopeds, motorbikes et al. There's a special level in hell for 2-stroke ones, at that.) is probably not the largest environment problem we've got, but it is still one, and we're better off without it.

Yeah well how do you control which 2 stroke lubricant gets used in such motors....you can't !
When I was a kid proper 2 stoke oils were a rarity and most everything ran on 1/2 pint of SAE 30 to the gal and it smoked like one SOB.
Even today when we still have air and water cooled 2 strokes the lube requirements for each is vastly different however we have totally synthetic lubricants that barely emit any smoke IF administered at the correct ratio.

And that's half the problem.....using the correct 2 stroke lube and at the correct ratio. 
Most 2 stroke owners have just one type and try and use it for everything and often at a single mix ratio so to simplify fueling 2 strokes and lower the risk of one of them running too lean on oil.

Although significant advances have been made in the last decade or so with self tuning electronic carbies in some effort to reduce pollution.

However there's something else to ponder on, when a 4 stroke wears and its oils rings fail to adequately control oil usage it's just as bad if not worse than a 2 stroke !

oh, blackouts in Germany on August 14 ...
they had to take factories off the grid ...

Simple clean solution to the energy problem:
find a rotating singularity, it converts mass to energy with an efficiency of up to 40 %.
Feed it your enemies ...

Problem solved ...

[mnementh]

We have one of those on eevBlog... I THINK it still eats my pics from time to time. 

mnem
Always remember... Skip the first.

[tautech]

We have one of those on eevBlog... it still eats my pics from time to time. 

mnem
Always remember... Skip the first.

OK thanks as I've been tempted to try the first but never brave enough. <insert chicken emoji>
So it's still busted ? 

[mnementh]

My mower is mostly wind powered on a Saturday afternoon

Yeah okay... I suppose we could convert mine to natural gas and shove a hose up my arse... 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

We have one of those on eevBlog... it still eats my pics from time to time. 

mnem
Always remember... Skip the first.

OK thanks as I've been tempted to try the first but never brave enough. <>
So it's still busted ? 

Let's see...

mnem
Looks like that one survived...

[mnementh]

This one too...?

Yup.

mnem
!!!

[Cerebus]

"Oil/grease is cheaper than metal." ~grand-dad

mnem
 

Here it's "Noone ever lubricated himself into poverty"

Some do if it's neck-oil we're talking about.

[mnementh]

Okay, that one was just because I got tired of looking at it on my desktop for months waiting for the right moment to use it... 

mnem

[mansaxel]

Oh, yes... Lithium electrolyte and the chemicals used to make it are so much better than a few minutes a month of hydrocarbon exhaust. Which you're just changing where that exhaust comes from; a single small engine or a huge power plant, as most of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuel.

My mower is a Flymo; it's IIRC built in the UK, has no batteries, one mov(w)ing part not counting the switch, and it has served us well for 10 years, even being treated like shit; we coil up the cable, scrape the clippings off and tuck it under the house when done and that's it. Zero service, zero oil changes, zero gas refills, zero gas spills, zero spark plug swaps. Picking the idiot "I buy new LiIon batteries all the time for my Ryobi shit" rôle when there's a better way is borderline strawman.

And here, we've got water, wind, sun and a fairly large amount of nuclear to tickle our electrons faster.

 

[bd139]

Yep. Bosch rotary electric here. Had it 15 years. Has about 20m of cable. Plug it in (with RCD) and off you go.

Has caused the genocide of at least 100 ant hills in its time as well.

[mansaxel]

"Oil/grease is cheaper than metal." ~grand-dad

mnem
 

Here it's "Noone ever lubricated himself into poverty"

Some do if it's neck-oil we're talking about.

Yeah, the saying was not unproblematic to translate. Most of the time, our habit of reusing words in Swedish is annoying. In this particular case, we use the verb "smörja" (related to "smear" and "schmieren" in english and german) in past tense,  like so: "Ingen har smort sig fattig". "Smörja" is also substantived into "smord" which is biblically "annointed" or "geschmoren" (IIRC). (There also is a substantive "smörja" meaning "filthy goop" or perhaps "Dreck", which of course is related.) This together brings out a bunch of associations that lead away from the beer brand. (I only now, doing research to reply, realised what "Neck Oil" means, and is.)

Further, my "english" version sort of, by using "himself", hints at the agent in the sentence is applying friction-reducing agents to his own person. Which of course, in context, is not at all what the original saying is trying to teach, and its usually understood (again, mostly from context, so admittedly weak) that the agent is supposed to friction-manage his machinery collection to avoid poverty.

Translation, the art of easy, simple mechanical swapping of languages word for word to convey meaning. Amirite? Saskia?