Testing EquipmentStarting with the obvious. I keep reading it's important to have a few DMMs. Save your life
and be able to keep working; cross reference readings; etc. I've been toying with the idea of starting by getting a Fluke 101 and a 17B+ to start with, and then saving for a second hand 87V and getting another 101 in the future. Thoughts?
This would give me four in total; two "cheap" semi-disposable multimeters, and two feature filled meters. Apparently the common $15 pocket meters would typically suffice as a "cheap" secondary meter, but I've seen a few videos essentially torture testing the 101's and I was left fairly (maybe naively?) impressed. It seems that a) the 101 would be likely to survive most things I would expect to encounter and b) even if something did blow up the meter, then it's still only $50 gone (vs. $15) compared to possibly a life? It also seems like the 87V will be all I'll ever need (most likely overkill actually), and the 17B+ represents a good balance of price and features from a known brand in the mean time.. Please let me know if I am missing the mark here though.
I have heaps of questions about oscilloscopes - enough for another thread. So I'll open another thread after I post this. Beyond scopes and function generators though, is there any other essential and major testing equipment that I have missed? At the moment, I am hoping to focus on the bigger ticket items that I need to save for, and I'll purchase the smaller things as I need them over time.
Soldering EquipmentI have been looking a lot at the Hakko FM-203. I know it's not the best soldering station the money can buy (PACE, Ersa, Metcal, JBC, etc. as alternatives), but I like that it can have two irons at once and enough power to run tweezers (albeit, without a second iron - but that should be okay for workflows that use tweezers?). It seems like it offers the most flexibility from the one station, within my price bracket at least. From there, I was planning on eventually owning 4 irons and various tips – 2x FM2027 "standard" irons for if I want to use two different tips at once, 1x FM2032 "micro" irons for smaller SMD work, and 1x FM2023 "tweezers" for SMD rework. Again, this feels like a good balance of tools for a given price. And again, please tell me if I am wrong.
On the flip side, it seems that a hot air station isn't suggested as something to spend a lot of money on around here unless you are desoldering all day every day. Is this accurate? As such, I've been looking at the Quick or Atten branded models - there seems to be some community effort to hack these as well which looks like fun. Any particular ones to avoid, or to look at? I think the Quick branded ones look nicer, but I don't know which work better (with or without hacking).
Power!I plan to build my own power supplies as one of my first projects. They look like fun and fairly easy to tackle. Plenty of good tutorials exit, and at worse, I can hack an ATX PSU if I come to that. I'm thinking that I would
like a variable bench top power supply (again DIY), but that I'll at least need some fixed supplies to start with. So I am looking at getting a few wall warts, rechargeable batteries and clips, and a few breadboard attachments. Anything else power wise, or will that cover 90% of my expected use cases?
Hand ToolsSomething I do have experience with! I am usually pretty comfortable choosing my own brands and quality of hand tools thankfully. Instead, can I write a list of some of the core hand tools I expect I'll need and can you point out anything I do or don't need from there?
- Screwdrivers (jewellers, standard and combination/security sets)
- Side cutters
- ESD safe tweezers (strong, straight, wide grip)
- Dental picks
- Pliers (large flat, large needle nose, jewellers size)
- Wire strippers
- Small spanner set (+ sockets?)
- Allen key set
- Files
- Nibbler
- Scalpel
- Engineering Ruler
- Measuring tape
- Digital Calipers
- All the iFixIt tools!! Haha
Everything Else..Obviously, I'm going to need components, safety equipment, adhesives/hot glue guns, parts, consumables, microcontrollers/SBC's, etc. For now, big stuff first. I do have access to a lot of the smaller tools from various places to start with, and as I said, I'll start with focusing on the big ticket items and buy small things week to week. I'll no doubt ask questions about these things in the future though. Otherwise, if I have missed anything obvious or essential, please do share.
Also, I know I probably could get started with a quality wall socket soldering iron, 9V battery, a few components, a $15-50 DMM, some pliers and screw drivers and start building. For whatever reason, I tend to find this method of building up a collection of things project by project fairly demotivating though. I find I learn best if I have a nice collection of quality tools and a decent collection of material (or in this case, components) to just work and explore with. If you have a really good case as to why this is a bad idea, please tell me (my partner may be happy for a case to be made, though she seems fairly supportive of this as well). I will certainly be all ears, but otherwise, if I can get away with buying the tools once and forgetting about them from there, I will be a happy man.