Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

You know, I sear that rope gets bigger and bigger, at least there is no noose on the end of it 

[Cerebus]

Now you see, if your forebears had been good little boys and girls and stayed behind the 1763 Proclamation Line and left the real Americans in peace on the other side of it like King George told you to, then there would have been no Colorado, or Iowa, or Nebraska and hence no need to make such a long trip. See where not doing as you're told gets you? It might seem like fun at the time but being naughty little boys and girls has consequences, like stupidly long road trips – and you couldn't even have a proper cup of tea at the end of it. 

 

Hey, at least we can still make the good stuff at the Royal Dockyards at Chatham, like we have for the last 400 years. Chatham probably made rope that went onto tea clippers headed for the colonies. 

You know, I sear that rope gets bigger and bigger, at least there is no noose on the end of it 

That rope walk is 1/4 mile long. The people who work there nowadays use bicycles to get around because otherwise it's a five minute walk from one end of the office to the other. So if Med needs a long proper hemp or sisal rope Kent's the place to go and get it.

[Robert763]

In 2003 I visited the USA and did a mega road trip. It was mixed work / pleasure. Flew into SFO. Bay Area - work and play (HSC, Weirdstuff etc). Drive to LA Personal business delivering a aircraft radio to a buyer $$$.  Drive to Los Alamos via a road stop and Albuquerque over nights -Work at LANL. Drive to Salt Lake City, -Work. Drive to Wendover / Bonneville - Play, for a few days at Speedweek. Drive to Gerlach NV (Black Rock dessert) via Winnemucca and State Route 49 / Jungo Rd, basically a dirt track -Play for a couple of days. Drive back to San Francisco via an overnight in Reno. Bit of work in the Bay area, pick up a R&S FSH3 (paid for by profit from the item sold in LA) and fly back home.  No idea how many miles but it was a lot. Rental car was "well used" 

[duckduck]

Gave myself a treat

It's Knipex season!

I'm jealous of the auto-strippers. Been wanting to try those for a couple of years now. Treated myself to these:

[mansaxel]

Treated myself to these:

Those are also magic; I put them on the wish list, and they appeared.

For flat, parallel jaws, they're unbeaten. For a more traditional "Polygrip" with serrated jaws (as they're called in Sweden, they're "Wasserpumpenzange" in German, and I'm not certain in English.) I prefer the Bahco over the Knipex:



The adjustment here is made by pressing the button on the back, which is a more positive size lock than the traditional "open wide, then slide" that Knipex made popular.

[Saskia]

tearing down stuff in my old company appartment. Did  a cliff dive on the stairs yesterday while trying to bring down a rather heavy vault.
Needless to say that the result was a-sounding 

Ok, I need to own up to the company and tell them about the smashed wall ... already spoke to my liability insurance.
Then took a road trip up north and back with 2 rather heavy gizmos in the trunk. Like 500 km, then unload about a quarter of a metric ton. Get everything in place, lock it up, go to bed.
This morning assemble some furniture that I also brought along.

My bones hurt like effing bloody hell.

Then drove 500 km back and started disassembling our wardrobe. The IKEA Pax fell in 30 minutes.
Now for the real challenge, 3 m of quite solid backacke.

The bloody assholes from the garage still did not attach the trailer hitch. Seems I need to pommihenka on them.

Thursday I will get a trailer. Still pondering if to do one trip with the trailer and the transit or 2 trips setting up the wardrobe before doing the trip with the transit. Fortunately that one has a trailer hitch. Even tho I do not look forward to lug a 4m trailer across the Eifel and the Hunsrück with just 90 HP. That aint gonna be fun.

In other news, the Festool T18 arrived on Saturday. I tried to dismantle the stuff with my Makita 9.6V, and it was a pain. The Festool is sooooo much better, incroyable ...

[Saskia]

any recommendations for an el cheapo spot welder to attach some metal strips to generic battery / cell packs ?

Thnx

[25 CPS]

I sat on the fence about the inspection camera deal at Princess Auto a little too long.  The local shop supposedly had five of them left but there were none when I got there.  Apparently they were out in the open at the end of an aisle and probably got shoplifted.  I was talking about that possibility with the lady at the cash register when she asked me if they turned up as I was paying for everything else and we were shooting the breeze about the crappy neighbourhood the store’s in when she suddenly broke off and started exclaiming “Look at that!  Look at that!  Look at that!” as this girl marched out between the cash registers with her arms out front loaded up with a ton of merchandise.

Well, that’s probably is what happened to the last five cameras the inventory system said were in the store.  I ordered one online and it arrived.  The carrying case was a nice surprise.  I don't recall seeing anything about that in the product description.  Some preliminary testing:





Need to play with it more and get the right storage card for it, but so far, so good.

[Vince]

Hmmm... nice little type 503 glowing Tek scope you have there...

[Peter_O]

Treated myself to these:

Those are also magic; I put them on the wish list, and they appeared.

For flat, parallel jaws, they're unbeaten. For a more traditional "Polygrip" with serrated jaws (as they're called in Sweden, they're "Wasserpumpenzange" in German, and I'm not certain in English.) I prefer the Bahco over the Knipex:



The adjustment here is made by pressing the button on the back, which is a more positive size lock than the traditional "open wide, then slide" that Knipex made popular.

Water plump pliers are for plumbers. TEA nerds do need other tools: 

Knipex pliers wrenches are the killer. Smooth jaws and jaws moving in parallel. Available in all sizes and different grip material. Less damage to a nut than any other type of wrench. I've an normal size like an average plumping gnawer and a very small one, able to grip M3 nuts etc.

https://www.knipex.com/products/pipe-wrenches-and-water-pump-pliers/pliers-wrenches-pliers-and-a-wrench-in-a-single-tool/pliers-wrenchespliers-and-wrench-single-tool/8605150

[25 CPS]

Hmmm... nice little type 503 glowing Tek scope you have there...

Wow, you got that exactly right from that crappy little picture!

[Zucca]

Congrats 25 CPS nice puppy. Mine is somewhere over the china ocean on a super slow boat.

[Zucca]

any recommendations for an el cheapo spot welder to attach some metal strips to generic battery / cell packs ?

oh yeah I need one too...
Kweld This one is from Germany
still a little bit spicy in price.

I maybe go in aliexpress and get something close to 5 stars <$50.
Of course the local fire department will be alerted about my tests.

PS: Price should not be a show stopper anyway, if you rebuild 3-4 some proprietary battery packs and voilaa business case is green.

[tautech]

any recommendations for an el cheapo spot welder to attach some metal strips to generic battery / cell packs ?

oh yeah I need one too...
Kweld This one is from Germany
still a little bit spicy in price.

I maybe go in aliexpress and get something close to 5 stars <$50.
Of course the local fire department will be alerted about my tests.

PS: Price should not be a show stopper anyway, if you rebuild 3-4 some proprietary battery packs and voilaa business case is green.

kWeld is the ducks nuts in this type of product and the thread where these are developed is here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/guesses-on-what-i-am-attempting-here/

[Vince]

Hmmm... nice little type 503 glowing Tek scope you have there...

Wow, you got that exactly right from that crappy little picture!

Just an educated guess, I got lucky ! 
The differential inputs, monolithic form factor, and general layout and type and colours of the knobs, especially the two little light grey ones in the center line..... it looked just like Papa smurf's 503 which he showed us just the other day, so it was fresh in my mind 

[mansaxel]

Water plump pliers are for plumbers. TEA nerds do need other tools: 

Knipex pliers wrenches are the killer. Smooth jaws and jaws moving in parallel. Available in all sizes and different grip material. Less damage to a nut than any other type of wrench. I've an normal size like an average plumping gnawer and a very small one, able to grip M3 nuts etc.

Yes, as I wrote I have that one as well, albeit a rather large model (2" grip, IIRC). I am more of a general tool fetishist, so all tools have a home here, be they suitable for TE handling or not. 

Now, that little 150mm model is very compelling. I might have to get that one too.

[Saskia]

need to take the door out of my large vault to bring it down the stairs without fatalities. The door itself is somewhere between 50 and 60 kg.
I am sooo looking forward to that ...

Anyone out there who can lend me some Arnie ?

[25 CPS]

Next up with is the little multifunction tester which I put through it’s paces with a random assortment of junk box parts from the retired Nortel engineer’s cookie tin of doom:





I had a loose resistor sitting on the bench so I figured this is a good place to start since I always second guess myself to death with these.  Red, black, orange, I think.  Gold.  So, a 10k 5% tolerance resistor assuming being colourblind isn't screwing me and the little tester tends to agree except it's value shifted between the first time I measured it and the second.



Final word on the resistor from the HP 3457A.  Chances are the resistor's value did drift from being at room temperature in my cool basement and then warming up as I handled it.



I'm not surprised at the result here.  This was a junk box 7805 linear regulator.



Unmarked junk box capacitor.



I got a couple of TO-3 package power transistors out of the cookie tin of doom and this disappointment is what happened when I attempted to set up the grabber leads to get on to it.  I don't even know if it's worth getting into it with the seller when I can just solder it back down myself and be done with it.



I made it work well enough to check out one of the transistors.

Anyhow, that's it for test equipment for today for me.  I'm about to head over to a friend's house for a little Christmas get together and need to stop to pick up a dessert on the way.  Tis the season.  As much as I enjoy the gatherings with friends, the longstanding hatred I have for the season lurks in the background regardless.

[Specmaster]

Hey, at least we can still make the good stuff at the Royal Dockyards at Chatham, like we have for the last 400 years. Chatham probably made rope that went onto tea clippers headed for the colonies. 

You know, I sear that rope gets bigger and bigger, at least there is no noose on the end of it 

That rope walk is 1/4 mile long. The people who work there nowadays use bicycles to get around because otherwise it's a five minute walk from one end of the office to the other. So if Med needs a long proper hemp or sisal rope Kent's the place to go and get it.

I have seen the outside of the rope works in Chatham many times and always swore that one day I would like to go and see how they made the rope, as they do tours of the factory.

In this video you can even see the bicycles that you mention.

[Saskia]

I would not need such long ropes. I have plenty of use for shorter ones. Combined with a trap door ...

[med6753]

I put these up for sale today. Giving the Old Tek Facebook group first dibs before putting them on CL and Facebook Marketplace. I made it very clear that I would not ship, pick up only. They are too big and bulky plus heavy and I don't want to jackass them around and risk hurting myself. Price is $25 USD/ea or take both for $40 USD.


   

[mansaxel]

I would not need such long ropes. I have plenty of use for shorter ones. Combined with a trap door ...

Together with a knife and some whipping twine a long rope makes shorter ropes.  The opposite is not as true; it requires splices or knots, both of which create weakness. The straight splice (for passing though pulleys) is particularly troublesome and requires some serious rigger skill to not slip.

Therefore, long ropes are desirable, as long (sic!) as possible, until you've really established the needed length. 

[Specmaster]

A while ago we were discussing the Aston Martin Lagonda and the Sinclair made dashboard instruments and today YT suggested that I might be interested in this video, and I am and I dare say many of you will be, so here it is.

[med6753]

A while ago we were discussing the Aston Martin Lagonda and the Sinclair made dashboard instruments and today YT suggested that I might be interested in this video, and I am and I dare say many of you will be, so here it is.

Decisions, decisions. Do I want to spend the 19 minutes watching it and then wish I could have that time back or am I going to do something...anything.....else?

I'll never tell. 

[Specmaster]

There's only one response to that.