Whats your Work-Bench/lab look like? Post some pictures of your Lab.

[jimdeane]

... the top shelf has four scintillator and photomultiplier muon detector assemblies.

Nice! What do you power them with? don't they need high voltage like most tubes?

They do, but these ( http://cosmic.lbl.gov/documentation/P30CW5_iss01.pdf ) have a PMT base in the package that has a built in HV power supply. It gets +5v and a control voltage of 0-1.2 or so, and produces 1000x the input voltage for the tube. Typical operating input voltage on these is about 0.6 to 0.8 volts (600 to 800 v to the tubes). Way easier than running HV to each tube, and still having to individually dial them in.

[jimdeane]

Whats going on up on that top shelf there?

Asking me? In my photo, the top shelf has four scintillator and photomultiplier muon detector assemblies.

Are those assemblies selfmade ?

Student made, from parts supplied by Fermilab (through a program called QuarkNet). This set had been assembled before, though we've had the paddles apart for maintenance. I think original assembly may have included fine polishing the scintillator edges, but the light guide 'cookie' was already attached with optical epoxy. The PMTs are attached to the cookies with PVC pipe to locate them, and optical grease to make a good connection. Then you have to take some steps to make them completely light tight, as even a pinhole leak makes it nonfunctional.

[Dubbie]

That's a really nice pmt jimdeane. I was looking at the Hamamatsu ones for building a spectrum analyser, but this style looks much nicer.

[kosacid]

out with the chickens in with my new printer, it took a while to build but its done anet a8, the prints are relay good better than expected

[jimdeane]

out with the chickens in with my new printer, it took a while to build but its done anet a8, the prints are relay good better than expected

Man, they've come a long way since I built mine in 2013 -- mine can't print sideways. 

Is the print bed heated? What kind of surface is on it?

[jimdeane]

That's a really nice pmt jimdeane. I was looking at the Hamamatsu ones for building a spectrum analyser, but this style looks much nicer.

Gamma spectrum analyzer? We should talk. I have a drawer with a few old pmts, a few spare chunks of scintillator, and a burning desire to analyze gamma spectra. Would make a neat adjunct to just using a geiger counter when I teach radiation topics.

[kosacid]

yes its heated bed it is just masking tape, i give it a wipe with iso alcohol and the wife`s hair spray never had a problem made a clip to hold a pcb marker pen and a head for my sons surf pi metal detector and a few mods for it, eg the cooling fan and line feeder and the button for the cable release, i built it and it worked fine straight away
as for the pictures they are fine till i upload them dunno why it is changing the orientation

[ez24]

as for the pictures they are fine till i upload them dunno why it is changing the orientation

I thought you were doing gravity experiments.

[djos]

as for the pictures they are fine till i upload them dunno why it is changing the orientation

yeah I've found Windows and many other systems (macOS is usually fine) ignore the EXIF data stored in the image which dictates the image orientation and instead display the image as it's stored. The easy way to fix this is open the image in a paint program and manually rotate it to the correct orientation.

[TerraHertz]

Or use the very excellent and freeware irfanview graphics manipulation tool. http://www.irfanview.com/
Great way to resize, recode, rotate, strip EXIF fingerprints, etc. Also has the ability to do batch operations on whole folders of images.

[dos]

I'm in the process of reorganizing this room, cleaned up the bench last night (the big Akro-Mils component drawers are new). Everything else is in a chaotic state though. Most of my equipment is ghetto but it gets the job done (ish)

[bitseeker]

Cool, dos. I like the towel-holder cable rack. Nice vintage Apple and Amiga goodness there too.

[dos]

Cool, dos. I like the towel-holder cable rack. Nice vintage Apple and Amiga goodness there too.

Thanks, old computers and game stuff is my main hobby (there's a ton more not in the pictures) which kinda naturally lead me to electronics. Someone on a different forum said retro games/computers is this generation's equivalent to radio hobbyists and I kinda agree, I see a ton of people in my hobby getting into electronics out of necessity and finding out they really enjoy it. I enjoyed it so much I went back to school at 33 and am looking to make it a career, it's way more fulfilling than what I do now (IT)

[bitseeker]

Someone on a different forum said retro games/computers is this generation's equivalent to radio hobbyists and I kinda agree, I see a ton of people in my hobby getting into electronics out of necessity and finding out they really enjoy it.

That's an interesting perspective. I hadn't thought about it, but I can see that similarity.

I enjoyed it so much I went back to school at 33 and am looking to make it a career, it's way more fulfilling than what I do now (IT)

I do hear that rather often, especially from those in IT. I wonder if there has been a sufficient increase in hardware jobs to accommodate the transitioners.

[dos]

That's an interesting perspective. I hadn't thought about it, but I can see that similarity.

Yeah, I don't know too much about radio guys but I assume a lot of them naturally had to learn electronics as a consequence of having a ton of old (and temperamental) gear, now there's this vintage computing/gaming hobby that's becoming pretty popular and having a similar effect. It's really crazy how it's caught on, when I started around the mid 90's there were only some small corners of the internet devoted to it and just about everything could be had insanely cheap at flea markets and thrift stores etc, which is how I got most of my stuff. Now people are paying absolutely insane prices for these old systems and there are youtube "celebrities" making tons of cash for talking about old video games. It's frustrating in one way because sometimes you wish the new people would just use an emulators or something and stop driving up prices but on the other hand it's awesome to see something you felt really weird for being into get almost mainstream acceptance (as mainstream as nerd crap gets anyway).

I wonder what old gear weird people will be hoarding and maintaining in another 50 years, maybe you'll see people posting photos of a wall of iphones or something next to their augmented reality interface nano soldering bench

[xrunner]

I wonder what old gear weird people will be hoarding and maintaining in another 50 years, ...

Are you calling some of us weird?

Well ... you might be right. 

[bitseeker]

From cheap and cheerful to weird and wonderful. It's all good.

Until our currently weird stuff becomes valuable, I guess my next ad-bench-ure is local lighting over the work area. I don't yet have an LCD monitor with a broken LCD whose backlight I could scavenge. I have seen some nice uses of LED strips, though.

[xrunner]

From cheap and cheerful to weird and wonderful. It's all good.

Until our currently weird stuff becomes valuable, I guess my next ad-bench-ure is local lighting over the work area. I don't yet have an LCD monitor with a broken LCD whose backlight I could scavenge. I have seen some nice uses of LED strips, though.

I used those cheap adhesive LED strips you can find on Ebay under two of my risers - over the ham radios and the test equip. They do the job. Plus if you like to party in your lab they can do slowly changing colors. 

[Cubdriver]

I wonder what old gear weird people will be hoarding and maintaining in another 50 years, ...

Are you calling some of us weird?

Well ... you might be right. 

Hey, if the shoe fits....   

As for rising prices, it makes me nuts to look at some of the websites out there that show the old HP stuff that several of us here are into, and see things like nixie frequency counters that went for $15-30 + shipping on the 'bay as recently as 8-10 years ago.    

Why couldn't my interest in electronics as a hobby have reignited itself a few years earlier than it did?!?   

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

From cheap and cheerful to weird and wonderful. It's all good.

Until our currently weird stuff becomes valuable, I guess my next ad-bench-ure is local lighting over the work area. I don't yet have an LCD monitor with a broken LCD whose backlight I could scavenge. I have seen some nice uses of LED strips, though.

I wound up using some LED strips that I'd purchased with the intention of using them under the kitchen cabinets, but wound up putting them on the bench as I needed lighting and the kitchen's (still!  ) nowhere near being done.  They're nice, but rather expensive compared to simply using a self adhesive strip of them.  (Of course the strips weren't as readily available six years ago when I bought these, either...)  Having them be plug-and-play was convenient; I simply stuck things under the rails with double sided foam tape and was good to go.  Reach under the top shelf of the bench and push the switch once for bright, a second time for dim and a third time to shut them off.





-Pat

[dos]

I wonder what old gear weird people will be hoarding and maintaining in another 50 years, ...

Are you calling some of us weird?

Well ... you might be right. 

I'm calling myself weird, whether it applies to you only you know 

[bitseeker]

Thanks for the bench lighting examples. I may start out with some cheapo strips and see how they turn out (or on, as the case may be).

[Messtechniker]

Thanks for the bench lighting examples. I may start out with some cheapo strips and see how they turn out (or on, as the case may be).

Don't forget to bung one under your workbench.
Helps you to easily see any small parts you may have dropped.

[Rbastler]

Put some on shelfs too. Helps finding stuff. I definitly need to put some under my workbench

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[neo]

Put some on shelfs too. Helps finding stuff. I definitly need to put some under my workbench

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While you are at it you may as well strap some to your arms as well!