Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Saskia]

going thru hellhole of system updates ...

MongoDB, NodeJS, Elasticsearch, Java, Docker, RabbitMQ, epel, plus deployment of ~ 600 Tensorflow containers. All clustered, of course. And expected to be a 0 downtime thingie.
After our IT frontline gorillas rebooted all of the database nodes over the week end, crashed the message queueing system (beyond easy recovery) and 2 country heads decided to call me directly ...

Worn out and tired.

I want a 24V lead battery, soap, clamps to teach those gorillas how to take care of a delicate system (it's handling several ten thousand translations/day ...)

[bd139]

Similar mess here. Counting down until it’s not. 

In the mean time my spirit animal is attached.

[mnementh]

Nope... wrong product. That's Weldene; made for joining dissimilar plastics per the Plastruct page I linked to earlier. I'm looking for Bondene, a different product made for joining similar plastics. Your site shows it, but imported from the US and at a cost of $30. That is majorly ouchies, and will take weeks to get to me thanks to the combination of COVID precautions and Customs.

This is what I'm currently  my head against all over the intardnet right now.

mnem
 

Doh
You are correct. I didn't check properly. Two other versions are Tensol 7R and Same Stuff https://www.micromark.com/SAME-STUFF-APPLICATOR The chemical wanted is Methylene Chloride aka dichloromethane. You could try just looking for that but will probably have to buy a litre. Do you know a chemist?

None that aren't currently serving time. 

mnem
 

Found it locally at a model train shop; Otter Valley Railroad. Of course I had to poke around their site a wee bit; wound up with also some CA accelerant and some blades for US$26 shipped. Man, things sure have changed since I was a kid and everything ran off of Variacs. 



Now there's a rabbit-hole... 

mnem
moo.

[bd139]

Oh it’s all changed since then. DCC and shit 

[mnementh]

Similar mess here. Counting down until it’s not.  In the mean time my spirit animal is attached.

written in Sharpie on stall door:

"People who write on men's room walls
roll their shit in little balls.
People who read these words of wit
eat those little balls of shit.

Burma-Shave"

mnem
so. wrong. 

[mansaxel]

Oh it’s all changed since then. DCC and shit 

I've got a friend who does US railways in N scale. He's taken one of the DCC arduino projects and subjected it to some logic analyser work with his Siglent scope and done major cleanups to the DCC transmitter code.

It is a serious rabbit hole intersection.

Edit: Sent insultingly lowball counteroffer on a 6236b. Gotta be cheap.

[mnementh]

Oh it’s all changed since then. DCC and shit 

Oh yeah... and people complaining that the app on their smartpwn just doesn't have the right tactile feedback... 

mnem
*carves Variac out of billet with hammer and chisel*   "here. speed control. uggh."

[mansaxel]

Oh it’s all changed since then. DCC and shit 

Oh yeah... and people complaining that the app on their smartpwn just doesn't have the right tactile feedback... 

mnem
*carves Variac out of billet with hammer and chisel*

here. speed control. uggh.

No. The Variacs sucked and suck. And that's been known for some 40 years. Back in the 70s there was magazine articles on building your own PWM drive control -- with selenium rectifiers. That's some epoch crossroads.

[bd139]

Yeah the scariac ones are horrible. They made them less shit by half wave rectifying it and persuading everyone that was as good as PWM. Obvious because the locos just sat there until you flicked the control up rapidly or garlic smoke came out of the box 

Oh it’s all changed since then. DCC and shit 

I've got a friend who does US railways in N scale. He's taken one of the DCC arduino projects and subjected it to some logic analyser work with his Siglent scope and done major cleanups to the DCC transmitter code.

It is a serious rabbit hole intersection.

Edit: Sent insultingly lowball counteroffer on a 6236b. Gotta be cheap.

Yeah it's an interesting one for sure on the DCC front. I have considered it myself. I'm not strange to that particular hobby having been somewhat consumed by it in the 1990s. The open source DCC implementations are all pretty shite so that'd be a good project cleaning them up. Whole DCC system isn't that complicated and is based on polarity modulation driven by an H-bridge at the transmitter end and a very simple receiver with a bridge rectifier to get DC out and pull the signal off the phase inversions. Clever but lame to be honest. I saw a system in the 1990s that actually had battery powered locomotives with radio control inside N gauge stuff 

[nfmax]

I'm currently working on an ultrasonics project with Paul Doust, someone I had not met before. He is not only a leading authority in ultrasonics & underwater acoustics, but also a dab hand at electronics, and a keen railway modeller. He has developed, and is in the process of commercialising, a system that uses real water to generate real steam, using ultrasound, in OO gauge models. Synchronised, naturally, with sound & motion.

[mnementh]

Yeah the scariac ones are horrible. They made them less shit by half wave rectifying it and persuading everyone that was as good as PWM. Obvious because the locos just sat there until you flicked the control up rapidly or garlic smoke came out of the box 

Oh it’s all changed since then. DCC and shit 

I've got a friend who does US railways in N scale. He's taken one of the DCC arduino projects and subjected it to some logic analyser work with his Siglent scope and done major cleanups to the DCC transmitter code.

It is a serious rabbit hole intersection.

Edit: Sent insultingly lowball counteroffer on a 6236b. Gotta be cheap.

Yeah it's an interesting one for sure on the DCC front. I have considered it myself. I'm not strange to that particular hobby having been somewhat consumed by it in the 1990s. The open source DCC implementations are all pretty shite so that'd be a good project cleaning them up. Whole DCC system isn't that complicated and is based on polarity modulation driven by an H-bridge at the transmitter end and a very simple receiver with a bridge rectifier to get DC out and pull the signal off the phase inversions. Clever but lame to be honest. I saw a system in the 1990s that actually had battery powered locomotives with radio control inside N gauge stuff 

Fuck that noise. HF Brushless all the way for anything needs a motor nowadays; no excuse for using anything less. I have a dual-brushless microheli build that weighs 38 grams all up, and hoists itself in the air by brute force doing high-perfomance acrobatics for 3-5 minutes on a 240mAH LiPo. The tail motor is literally the diameter of a pencil. And thanks to the miracles of China-direct marketing, these motors retail for $8-22 each.

Replace the ball bearings periodically and they'll run forever; or at least until the neodymium magnets shatter from age and embrittlement.

mnem
 

[tggzzz]

Similar mess here. Counting down until it’s not. 

In the mean time my spirit animal is attached.

At a place I once worked, during an exit interview HR-droid asked whether the softie would miss improving the product. His response included the phrase "polishing a turd".

[bd139]

They're not going to ask me because I will give them the answer they are expecting

[tggzzz]

They're not going to ask me because I will give them the answer they are expecting

You are presuming joined-up comms and thinking. I remind you that HRdroids are involved

[bd139]

Good point. If asked I was going to lead with the line that the problem with the company is all the hats are made of arses.

[GreyWoolfe]

      

All righty then... Today was a crappy day for the ol' TinkerDwagon; I've murdered my 54645A. Well, my clumsy fat ass did, anyways...     ...I had pulled out the cart it was sitting on to get a tool that fell off my bench behind it and just backed right into it, knocking it off onto the floor. 

Did exactly the kind of damage it had when I bought it... even in the same areas of the front panel... only worse. Oh, and cracked the corner of the control PCB that somehow escaped destruction the first go-round.

PCB repair is underway with resin curing as we speak; however the front panel is another story. I need to cement these two chunks back in place, and I don't know what type of cement to use, so I'm calling for a lifeline from any of you chemistry freaks.

I do know that ordinary consumer-product cyanoacrylate doesn't work; I tried it the first go-round with a bunch of support tabs I found broken loose. It started out looking good, etching into the material just like regular model-plastic ABS; but it just turned the plastic crumbly and never set up like CA & ABS usually does. As you can see in the 2nd pic, it is marked as a ABS/polycarbonate blend, so I'm sure that's the cause. I just don't know what WILL work.

Anyhoo... I have the parts placed and the outer surface masked off with tape to seal the edges of the crack. This is my preferred method; I've used it more times than I can count to repair cracked VCR/CD/DVD/Audio gear fascia made of ABS. This tactic usually yields as close to a invisible repair as you can get, however it requires a watery consistency cement that will infiltrate into the cracks like CA does.

I would prefer an actual brand or product known to work with this stuff; ideally one which can be ordered off Amazon.

EDIT: I'm leaning towards Plastruct Bondene: https://plastruct.myshopify.com/pages/technical-info-msds-sheets I think it's what I used to use for my big ship and plane models where you had to hold multiple parts together at once and let the glue wick between. Now trying to find a local supplier.

Thanks,

mnem

Well isn't that a pain in the scaly dwagon @ss.  When I made my scrap wood scope cart, I had a flexible rubber band with hooks on it similar to a bungee cord.  Had 2 scopes stacked for fun and they wouldn't move for anything.  Glad I found that in the garage whilst prowling for the scrap wood.

[Cerebus]

Good point. If asked I was going to lead with the line that the problem with the company is all the hats are made of arses.

It took me 2-3 seconds to figure out what you meant. You'll be six counties away before the HR droids figure it out.

[tonyalbus]

Mega M328 328 Atmel.
Those little useful component testers
- what is this 3 legged thing... it will tell you..

[tggzzz]

Good point. If asked I was going to lead with the line that the problem with the company is all the hats are made of arses.

Can you hear the company officers better when they are standing up?

Could you tell the droids that you have tired of asking the company officers to stand up when they are talking?

[25 CPS]

In related events... Canadian coathangers are too fukkin' good. 

I'm right now on coathanger number 7 (7 coil segments like in the wet load above) and still drawing way too much current; the steel wire is too damned fat! The cheap 'merkin coathangers above are nice & thin... only needed 4 to get loading right where I wanted.

mnem
Every silver lining has its grey cloud.

You need to remember that where Americans use 480 volts, we use 600 up here.  That in turn mandates the heavier coat hangers in order to handle the higher power dissipation requirements.

mnem

It was the delivery... For some reason, I heard that in my grand-dad's perfect deadpan southern drawl, and felt the unflinching gaze with which he delivered all tidings both good and bad, and it was a perfect moment.

Yeah, I know that came as much from what was inside of me as what was delivered by all those inconvenienced electrons; but it doesn't matter. For a moment the old man reached out to me across space and time, and he was here with me, and it was good.

Thank you, my friend.

mnem
*wistful sigh*

Experiences like that, that for a brief moment evoke a loved one that's gone are something to be cherished for sure.

It happens to me too.  Every so often I cross paths with something that brings back one of the people that mentored me that passed far too soon and for a moment, it's like they're sitting a few feet away gently giving their pointers or making a joke about the situation that also contained some sage advice based on their own long experience, then it's over just as fast as it's happened and I'm by myself again.  The quiet with the rustling whirring of a motor generator set running gets me that way; I'll have to show you pictures of one of my repair jobs some time that I wish my friend could've seen.

[Specmaster]

Mega M328 328 Atmel.
Those little useful component testers
- what is this 3 legged thing... it will tell you..

Yep, the cheaper one is the most useful, as you said it was the smoother one and just worked with no issues. It is also pretty accurate and is a very useful tool in diagnosing a faulty piece of kit. You have noticed that I used one of those in assisting with the repair of the PL310 power supply recently for checking the caps, for capacity and also ESR at the time, resistors and transistors can also checked, quickly and easily. If you make up 3 leads with mini grabbers fitted and solder the other ends onto 2.5mm pitch header pins then it really becomes a very useful tool as many parts can be tested in situ for a quick dirty test. I use mine a lot but if anything that requires accuracy, I use a proper LCR meter with kelvin leads, but that requires the parts to be either new or already removed from DUT.

[SilverSolder]

I feel your pain.

The best stuff I've ever found for repairing plastic is this:  https://www.amazon.com/Devcon-22045-Plastic-Welder-Dev-Tube/dp/B003NUGL9S

It smells so evil you just know it has to work.  And it does.  I've even glued paddle switches back together with this stuff, strong as new.

This product has a shelf life of a year, make sure you get fresh stuff and you're golden.

[med6753]

Experiences like that, that for a brief moment evoke a loved one that's gone are something to be cherished for sure.

It happens to me too.  Every so often I cross paths with something that brings back one of the people that mentored me that passed far too soon and for a moment, it's like they're sitting a few feet away gently giving their pointers or making a joke about the situation that also contained some sage advice based on their own long experience, then it's over just as fast as it's happened and I'm by myself again.  The quiet with the rustling whirring of a motor generator set running gets me that way; I'll have to show you pictures of one of my repair jobs some time that I wish my friend could've seen.

I never had a mentor. What I learned was through personal experience. And the accomplishments were for personal satisfaction only. I've even had individuals (guess) who would try to discourage what I did. Claimed it took time away from them. Which is why I was essentially  inactive in the hobby for many years.
 
Current Lady doesn't completely understand what I do but she appreciates it and encourages it. When I happen to mention to her that I'm stuck fixing something she always states "I know you. You won't give up until you fix it". And when I mention at a later date that I did fix it her response is "I knew you would". That's all the mentoring I need. 
 

[BU508A]

I'm having one of the earlier models of these universal testers. As Spec wrote, very useful for repairs and for characterizing unkown parts. I've putted mine in a Bopla case and created a little storage for the testing leads.

The DUT here is a TIP132.

[mnementh]

Mega M328 328 Atmel.
Those little useful component testers
- what is this 3 legged thing... it will tell you..

That red one was the first one I ever got; mine was preassembled tho. Postmortem revealed the 3.3V reg was dead short and the Atmega328 took it personally. Shocking. That's when I got the Yiwangia unit you guys may have seen on my bench; it came built into a recycled caller ID shell. That one runs on a recycled puffy LiPo from my Delta wing. 

   

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2060353.m570.l1313&_nkw=ESR02&_sacat=0

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=DTU-1701&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=DTU1701

Since then, I've upgraded... got one of these BSIDE ESR202 Pro units for CAD$27 WITH the tweezers; vendor had the black one on sale, and the red one $10 less for some reason.  Only took 3 weeks from China.

I highly recommend it; the ZIF socket pinout on the 328 Component Tester is a wee bit confusing; the slots on this one are much more straightforward. Also, it reliably tests LEDs and generally gives more consistent results than older firmwares.

But the big thing for me is the SMD test panel being all up high and easy to get to; that is just... the shit. Nothing else makes testing tiny chip parts as ... well, not easy. I'm too old and too bad eyesight for it to ever be easy again.    But at least it's not like volunteering to get kicked in the junk over and over again, like most handwork with SMDs is.   I can reliably get valid results even with 0602 and SOT-23 parts using this thing. 

EDIT:    I forgot... this thing is also available one eBay & Aliex as the DTU-1701, often for a few dollars cheaper. Usually can still be found ~US$25-27 net if you shop carefully. Look for V3.1 or newer.

mnem