Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

[mnementh]

Well the storm that for a short time was a hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm and was further downgraded to a tropical depression and is basically now just a heavy rain event with winds no greater than 30 MPH. But rather than hitting Long Island and hooking east over New England as predicted it instead hooked west and is now directly over me. You can clearly see the storm spin on the radar. So flood warnings are still in effect until tonight. NYC also basically took a direct hit but any flooding was minimal.

Proves once again that weather prediction, even with super computer analysis, is an inexact science. Not surprising since you're dealing with Mother Nature and it's a woman. 

Maybe she's just pissed at how poorly the cabal of old rich white men who run the humanity show have treated her for the last couple centuries...

mnem
*makes mental note to call dad after breakfast & see how he weathered the storm*

[vk6zgo]

What is it with you Yanks having toggle switches that flick up for ON ? 

I would never mount them otherwise. And I am not a yank. At least for a regular on/off function, especially as a mains switch, ergonomics and safety mandate so.

I'm quite happy with either.

Domestic switches in Oz are all down for "on", but test equipment or other electronic stuff is usually up for "on", & circuit breakers are always the latter way.

These peculiarities are well known, & present no difficulties.

[mnementh]

Shout out to all you DER EE DE5000 owners, you might be able to help this fellow member out
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/der-ee-de-5000-lcr-meter-calibration-and-adjustment/new/#new

Duly noted and inappropriate comments made.

mnem
 

[Saskia]

Re Apple: installed Windows on my MacBook. Will need to give it a deep clean. ClF3 should do the trick ...

[factory]

Today's arrivals, the hp/Dymec 2590A microwave frequency converter and a Racal 9837 universal counter.


David

[mnementh]

   Putting stuff into storage is a trap, and it quickly becomes a financial leech which bleeds you dry. I've been paying for storage on the mega-trailer and a car for close to 2 years now; over 30K American. The car I'm losing money on for sure; the rest of our combined lives in the trailer... uhhhhh... 

Overall, it's a huge amount of money... but you rationalize it from month to month that what you're doing is buying "just a little more breathing room"; the ability to put off dealing with it until you can gather your wits aboot you.

Life is a trap, and one from which there is only one exit.

In the meantime, people can choose which trap to fall into. With me, it is scopes and.... you know the rest.

Sounds like a prelude to the old "Life is a lemon, and I want my money back..." argument... and that's okay. It's perfectly normal to feel this way when you're in the trenches. It's shifting back to "Live like there's no tomorrow, for one day you may be right." mode that gets harder the older you get. 

Don't get me wrong... I'm renting a shipping container right now, with intent of moving towards a goal; but when we moved here, I did the same exact thing, and I quickly realized how much of a drain it was on my local economy. That's why I bought & built a steel shed kit; to get out from under the expense and to have a place to sort and get rid of the shit we didn't need.

Of course, after doing that we accumulated all manner of new shit that now needs to be triaged and moved... 

mnem
It's like The Circle of Life, only with lots of aching back and storage bins... The Circle of Junk...?

I'm currently clearing out my parents' 8/16 room house, so I'm currently highly adept at triage

Yeah... amazing the skills we acquire that we never imagine when we're younger. Sometimes also a bit depressing. The key to triage, at least for me, is to actually say goodbye to it and move on. That is often a lot harder than it should be; some objects hold powerful memories. But things are a trap.

mnem
"Don't fall in love with your junk." ~mom

[mnementh]

Re Apple: installed Windows on my MacBook. Will need to give it a deep clean. ClF3 should do the trick ...

I can't figure out which aspect you're trying to clean here... 

mnem
 

[vk6zgo]

My house is not that big really. Have you seen the amount of stuff some of these people accumulate? I frankly need to stop buying much more gear because it's just piling up.

I don't need to look elsewhere to come to that conclusion

I just had a nightmarish thought.

What if we all had to work together for the same company?   

As long as you didn't tidy my bloody bench at work-------I knew exactly where everything was!

I had a very large picture monitor sitting on a shelf, which had been "ratted" for parts to fix others.

"Helpful" people would say:- " You should dump that thing------you'll never fix it!"
I gradually accrued the required parts, & in a few hours one day, put it back together.

"Where did that extra monitor come from?" they asked.

"It's that pile of junk you wanted to dump!"


The good thing about fixing stuff for a living, is that you've got to be there, so you can just spend the time, without too many distractions (plus you don't have to pay for the bits you need), whereas doing it for fun at home, there are always "more important" things that crop up, and you have to pay for all the bits!

[tggzzz]

It's perfectly normal to feel this way when you're in the trenches. It's shifting back to "Live like there's no tomorrow, for one day you may be right." mode that gets harder the older you get.

I'm in two minds about that. There's no shame in deciding to live by sitting on the porch in the sun, with a glass of wine and an old friend. OTOH, I want to go out with my boots on, as in the movie "Secondhand Lions".

Yeah... amazing the skills we acquire that we never imagine when we're younger. Sometimes also a bit depressing. The key to triage, at least for me, is to actually say goodbye to it and move on. That is often a lot harder than it should be; some objects hold powerful memories. But things are a trap.

While it is usually bad to try to "go back", remembering isn't necessarily destructive.

Pleasingly youngsters have become far less interested in accumulating stuff, being more interested in accumulating experiences. That's the only good side I can see to current house prices.

[vk6zgo]

Also quite frankly Jim Williams was a liability in two areas. One being the amount of crud falling or poking into the vents on his kit causing an electrocution hazard. Secondly licking the solder. 

Workbench Russian roulette!

Maybe Jim Williams might have been even more productive if his desk was clean? Like I said, I could never work in that mess and I really have never seen any engineer where I worked have a pile like that and there were plenty of productive smart people there. But he's used to it.

I mean I'm thinking of a scenario ...

So you take your finished project to he boss. He/she says "Wow this looks really good and it's just what we needed to get back on schedule. But I'm afraid I have to do something first. I need to check you work area. If it's clean and organized, I'm afraid this project will be deemed "unacceptable" because it couldn't have actually come from a clean and organized area.

 

Many EEs I worked with would build something up "spiderweb fashion", with connections floating in mid-air, which "worked a treat".
When we "prettied it up" on a PCB, we would have to fart around for ages trying to get it to work! 

[med6753]

As long as you didn't tidy my bloody bench at work-------I knew exactly where everything was!

I had a very large picture monitor sitting on a shelf, which had been "ratted" for parts to fix others.

"Helpful" people would say:- " You should dump that thing------you'll never fix it!"
I gradually accrued the required parts, & in a few hours one day, put it back together.

"Where did that extra monitor come from?" they asked.

"It's that pile of junk you wanted to dump!"


The good thing about fixing stuff for a living, is that you've got to be there, so you can just spend the time, without too many distractions (plus you don't have to pay for the bits you need), whereas doing it for fun at home, there are always "more important" things that crop up, and you have to pay for all the bits!

In a prior life where others were living in the same residence I always knew when someone was into my tools/equipment. They never put it back in the right spot or would forget to put it back. And I would ask where so-and-so was and no one would own up. Never again will that repeat itself. 

[bd139]

Re Apple: installed Windows on my MacBook. Will need to give it a deep clean. ClF3 should do the trick ...

I can't figure out which aspect you're trying to clean here... 

Actually on that note I managed to bag a cheap Lenovo T495 for my middle one today for less than half the cash I got back from the Mac. Chuffed with that. Mint with Lenovo premier warranty 20 months remaining.

All this talk of clutter and stuff makes me want to downsize. I lived out of a couple of bags once for a couple of years and it was fairly nice. 

[beanflying]

Interesting use of Ferric Chloride on Aluminium for etching with a vinyl mask. Might be of interest for panel restorations but worth a watch anyway.

[med6753]

All this talk of clutter and stuff makes me want to downsize. I lived out of a couple of bags once for a couple of years and it was fairly nice.

I like my stuff. Have no desire to downsize my stuff. I just don't want no one to mess with my stuff. (And over my dead body that ain't gonna happen). 

[mnementh]

Re Apple: installed Windows on my MacBook. Will need to give it a deep clean. ClF3 should do the trick ...

I can't figure out which aspect you're trying to clean here... 

Actually on that note I managed to bag a cheap Lenovo T495 for my middle one today for less than half the cash I got back from the Mac. Chuffed with that. Mint with Lenovo premier warranty 20 months remaining.

All this talk of clutter and stuff makes me want to downsize. I lived out of a couple of bags once for a couple of years and it was fairly nice.

Mint condition or Linux Mint...? 

mnem
 

[bd139]

Re Apple: installed Windows on my MacBook. Will need to give it a deep clean. ClF3 should do the trick ...

I can't figure out which aspect you're trying to clean here... 

Actually on that note I managed to bag a cheap Lenovo T495 for my middle one today for less than half the cash I got back from the Mac. Chuffed with that. Mint with Lenovo premier warranty 20 months remaining.

All this talk of clutter and stuff makes me want to downsize. I lived out of a couple of bags once for a couple of years and it was fairly nice.

Mint condition or Linux Mint...? 

mnem
 

Both. Nearly  .  The other one is running Ubuntu at the moment.

[Cubdriver]

Well the storm that for a short time was a hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm and was further downgraded to a tropical depression and is basically now just a heavy rain event with winds no greater than 30 MPH. But rather than hitting Long Island and hooking east over New England as predicted it instead hooked west and is now directly over me. You can clearly see the storm spin on the radar. So flood warnings are still in effect until tonight. NYC also basically took a direct hit but any flooding was minimal.

Proves once again that weather prediction, even with super computer analysis, is an inexact science. Not surprising since you're dealing with Mother Nature and it's a woman. 

Yeah, it's been pouring here all morning.  Still, I'll take that - rain is far less likely than wind to bring trees down...

-Pat

[Specmaster]

What is it with you Yanks having toggle switches that flick up for ON ? 

I would never mount them otherwise. And I am not a yank. At least for a regular on/off function, especially as a mains switch, ergonomics and safety mandate so.

I'm quite happy with either.

Domestic switches in Oz are all down for "on", but test equipment or other electronic stuff is usually up for "on", & circuit breakers are always the latter way.

These peculiarities are well known, & present no difficulties.

Circuit breakers are down for OFF as the gravity effect also aids faster operation in the event of an overload occurring.

[Andrew_Debbie]

Had some time to troubleshoot the Dana 5100 DMM.   I had previously isolated a fault to the digitizer card.   

With 1VDC input to the meter,  U1 pins 2 and 10 are a flat line on my 'scope.   Inputs Hi, Lo and SID all look reasonable.   I may have found a fault.     U1 is a CD4016 and C2 is 10µF 35V tantalum.   (Kemet T356)

I ordered both from RS, but my vote is the capacitor.    C2 is not a factory select part.   C1, also tantalum,  is factory selected with a Dana part number.   The reference cap looks to be working, so I'm leaving it alone for now.

[Cerebus]

There's a curve where there is an intersection of "these parts are really cheap" and "I've lost half a cut tape of parts in the carpet" which is a sweet spot of efficiency for hand building. 0603 / 0805 is about the middle.

• I always do my part stuffing at the living room table, where there is a reasonably clear wooden floor. A combination of that and the "shine a torch sideways across the floor" trick means that I'm:
  
  • Doing pretty well on the "lost parts count" front, and
  • acutely aware quite how much dust, fluff and other crap is on the living room floor.
• I'm occasionally and casually trying to mentally design a tray that parts don't b^o_uⁿ_ce off but that still has a smooth ESD safe surface and with a lip that will catch parts as they try to ping off into the distance.
  
  JLC use the used backing boards from PCB drilling as the flat, rigid packing for stencils.  I was using the one that came with my stencil as my working surface (nice and smooth, neutral grey) when stuffing boards the other day. One part tried to get away from me, but got trapped in the registration holes that go through the edge of the backing board as it tried to skitter off. Thus it strikes me that perforated hardboard might make quite a good margin for an SMD hand assembly area as a part catcher.
  

I put my silicone work mat in a old cafeteria lunch tray. Works a treat for keeping itty-bits captive, aside from the occasional crease in the bottom of my forearm if I absently rest it on the edge too long. And of course, finding itty-bits stuck there from time to time...

I suppose I should work up some actually grounded ESD-safe solution; for now I just lay it on my ESD mat and takes my chances.

mnem
 

I wasn't thinking ESD safe in the sense of grounded etcetera, rather in the sense of "not made of a material that is inherently prone to making ESD problems for me". Wood or hardboard is quite conductive enough to be 'ESD safe' in this context, but is a bit hard and bounce inducing in my experience. I can't quite think of a material that's smooth enough to slide SMD parts around on, while also being a bit energy absorbing, and also has suitably low resistivity.

[Vince]

   Just finished my little project.

My JLC boards are just fine. They fit just fine in the DB9 Amphenol shell I bought. Board is electrically fine. So I went to solder the components...

Ummm... you know JLC offers parts population services as well, right? And these quantities... very possibly cheaper completely populated boards than you can buy the components yourself.

mnem
 

Wow, no didn't know, wil have to check for that next time / project ! 

No big deal in the case at hand as I was on a shoe string budget and already had bought the parts anyway. Plus only 6 components to solder and only 5 boards to make or so...

But will keep that in mind in case it might make financial and practical sense in a future project...

[Cerebus]

Pleasingly youngsters have become far less interested in accumulating stuff, being more interested in accumulating experiences. That's the only good side I can see to current house prices.

What I find concerning is that a lot of that "having experiences" is being done in a consumeristic rather than an organic way. There seems to be an attitude in some that an "experience" is a package that you go out and buy, and of course there is a whole platoon of soul dead wastes of oxygen marketing people who are only too happy to pander to that. (Where's "Ark B" when you need it.)

[Andrew_Debbie]

But will keep that in mind in case it might make financial and practical sense in a future project...

It almost always does for their  689 'basic' componenets.   Those are the parts they don't charge extra for.   They charge $3 per component for 'extended' parts.  I find it to be  about the same cost to order 10 boards with assembly as buying the parts and soldering myself.   It depends on the parts.  Some have a minium qty. of more than 10, so you pay for parts that you never see.

[Cerebus]

In a prior life where others were living in the same residence I always knew when someone was into my tools/equipment. They never put it back in the right spot or would forget to put it back. And I would ask where so-and-so was and no one would own up. Never again will that repeat itself. 

The last person to do that to my tools is dead - and I'm not talking natural causes.

The truth is that Dave was killed by a combination of alcohol, recklessness, a motorbike and a big tree. But I don't tell them that. Dave was, however, the last person to mess with my tools - largely I suspect because ever since I've been able to tell people that he was the last man to abuse my tools, and that he's dead, with a straight face and my hand on my heart.