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

[IanJ]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd update on my shed, well at least one corner of it.

Added some additional lighting and a shelf big enough for all my test gear. More room to play now!

Ian.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Nicely clipped power cables attached neatly to the walls.

Horrifying.
 

[george graves]

Love this thread...But...

I'm still not sold on having all your equipment so high up above the bench.  It seems like most of you have your PS and scopes 12-14-18" above the bench where your circuit would be.  Seems like a lot of looking up and down, arms starched out to adjust the scope, PS. look back down again, look back up...ect.....

It seems to me - that you want your scope, and most use PS on the bench - right in a short throw of the circuit your working with.  At the same level of what your working on.

Sure - up on a shelf gets them out of the way - but I think if you look at most work benches - we really only need a 12x12" area to work in for the actually PCB/breadboard - the rest gets filled up with tools.  Outside of that I keep a laptop, a scope, my PS ect.....

[TerraHertz]

Yeah, I feel the same way. I like to work with everything right in front of me, circuits just inches from PS, scope, etc.
What this means is that the bench has to be deep enough for testgear at the back, work area in front. But most people seem to build quite narrow benches... strange.

The other thing I do is have test gear in 19" racks, that have wheels. So I can wheel up whichever set of gear I need next to the bench at the time. Not that there's ever the *right* combination of gear in one rack when I want it.

[PA4TIM]

The problem is when you have more stuff then avarage and you want everything on table level near by your project you need veeeeeeerrrrryyyy large projects 
I have it spread out over 6 meter from table-hight to about 1 meter above the table. And my usable bench part ( for soldering ect) is about a meter long so i often need long wires or move the project to the small space before the gear.
Then I have a rack that is about 2 meter high and 2 wide and 1 meter deep that is stuffed with calibration gear agains the other wall. The rest is used for cabinets with parts, small instruments, manuals, standards ect. and two scoop mobiles, one with a 54 and HP waveanalyser and the other as temporary worktable so I can turn a patient around without lifting it.
So impossible to get it all on the bench in close range.

[IanJ]

I'm still not sold on having all your equipment so high up above the bench.  It seems like most of you have your PS and scopes 12-14-18" above the bench where your circuit would be.  Seems like a lot of looking up and down, arms starched out to adjust the scope, PS. look back down again, look back up...ect.....

My equipment shelf is 15" above the bench height, which means my gear is not far off eye level. You get used to it.......you get used to glancing up to view/adjust. It's better for me as it means my test equipment rarely get's moved.

Below a pic from 1984 when I worked in a workshop building bespoke computers for the oil industry (that's me on the right foreground). You can see a portable scope trolley in the foreground, all the test gear was brought to the benches from a storage area. To be fair, we all got used to that method and it's was fine also.
Hmmm, that workshop was pretty messy eh!

Actually, my biggest hurdle these days is having old eyes!........with my distance specs on I see jack-shit close up, and with them off I see jack-shit across the room............!

Ian.

[M0BSW]

 Nothing fancy in here, it's all old most of it is UK 2013 all of it will be UK, good quality some of it is over 30 Years old and still working well, as a radio amateur it does all I want it to do and some.
I like my equipment and my hobby

[tbj]

I posted a build thread on here for this bench a while ago, but never got round to posting any pictures during the build. Here's one of it completed, though. 



Quite a small workspace. I don't have much test gear - an old Hitachi scope which was kindly donated to me, a Maplin bench power supply and a Uni-T multimeter. Currently building a function generator. 

[dr_p]

I recently purchased some new test gear and got around to getting a bigger work bench. This is the final setup:

[jnd]

This is my workbench at work. The company owns the PC, two power supplies at right, Weller soldering station, Rigol scope and all the handheld multimeters. The rest is mine, half of that is good and working, rest is waiting for repairs and adjustments or parts as is the case of the Tesla millivoltmeter which is missing the crucial part - active probe. Only two instruments are calibrated right now, one is the new Agilent U1232A and the other is resitance decade (top left) which I won pretty cheaply in local auction. Other noteworthy thing is the lamp modified for LED, it runs neutral colored Bridgelux at about 18 W, much better than the usual CCFL.



We just recently moved the electronics section after 4 years to new, larger building. In the old room we had just basic tables which I didn't like so much so I proposed some changes to the shelves as I was inspired by the then new Dave's lab. It's not exactly as I wanted, the shelves aren't deep enough for my old equipment but they are designed to fit the smaller size Tesla meters as you can see On the other side of room there are six more of these tables, back to back, these standalone doesn't look that nice from the other side.

See the whole album here: http://imgur.com/a/Q1CUQ. You can click on top right corner of the image and select full resolution.

[M. András]

thats a wp120 connected to the wd1 by any chance? if it is could you do a cold water test if its can maintain the set temp? like the jbc video somewhere on this forum, the wrmp cant with the rt11 thats for sure

[jnd]

thats a wp120 connected to the wd1 by any chance? if it is could you do a cold water test if its can maintain the set temp? like the jbc video somewhere on this forum, the wrmp cant with the rt11 thats for sure

WP80 and WD1, I don't want to experiment with it as it's not mine and it's rather new It's still 80 W so it heats up very quickly from the standby. We also have here two larger Weller stations with 80 W desoldering iron and 200 W hot air blower, it has the same WP80 pen.

[nanofrog]

WP80 and WD1, I don't want to experiment with it as it's not mine and it's rather new It's still 80 W so it heats up very quickly from the standby. We also have here two larger Weller stations with 80 W desoldering iron and 200 W hot air blower, it has the same WP80 pen.

How do you like it?

I have the same, as well as a WMP, and find that the recovery time is a bit slower than I'd expect. Knee-jerk reaction is to turn it up a bit, but that tends to cook the flux off too quickly/turn it to a carmel color (rosin flux BTW).

[jnd]

I have mine on 350 C all the time and using short and fat chisel tip most of the time, I think it's the LT-B. Long and thin tips have problems heating up any bigger components but not this one and it's pretty universal, good enough down to 1206 and similar. Also you have to make sure that the tip contact area is clean and smooth as possible, it's not that big and all the heat goes through it. I didn't measure the tip temperature but the display always stays rock solid. Only time it goes a bit low is when you change tips on the desoldering iron but that one also has much higher mass and therefore thermal capacity. For large connectors or ground fills it's good to turn it up a bit but it's not usually necessary.

[M. András]

trought the pc software from my wd1m looks like it streams real time data not just that "fixed on the unit's lcd" + i have no idea why they flagged the unit with upgradable firmware... you can download the tool for it but there is no firmware for it.. as for the test what i asked, it would be a comparison for me to try and buy a wp120 for this unit or buy a jbc with 2-3 outputs next time, after initial issues with this one now im statisfied with it, the rt11 on this wrmp should be putting out 55watts however on the cold water test its goes down to 110celsius and it stays there, only the tip submerged for about 5-7mm

[nanofrog]

I have mine on 350 C all the time and using short and fat chisel tip most of the time, I think it's the LT-B. Long and thin tips have problems heating up any bigger components but not this one and it's pretty universal, good enough down to 1206 and similar. Also you have to make sure that the tip contact area is clean and smooth as possible, it's not that big and all the heat goes through it. I didn't measure the tip temperature but the display always stays rock solid. Only time it goes a bit low is when you change tips on the desoldering iron but that one also has much higher mass and therefore thermal capacity. For large connectors or ground fills it's good to turn it up a bit but it's not usually necessary.

Thanks. 

It's the smaller iron that's giving me fits (WMP), but as you say, it seems to be due to the very small mass of the tips (~50% or less of an equivalent LT series regarding mass) that's causing my issues.

Seems I'll just have to stop being lazy and swap irons more often.   

[(In)Sanity]

My bench and all associated areas around it always look like a mess.   I have far too many projects going on at any one time to actually put everything away.   About every 6 months I'll clean everything up and within a week it's already a mess.   Somehow I still manage to get stuff done......and I always know where everything is

Jeff

[nanofrog]

About every 6 months I'll clean everything up and within a week it's already a mess.   Somehow I still manage to get stuff done......and I always know where everything is

JMHO, but that's all that really matters.  Slobs Unite! 

BTW, recently departed Bob Pease and Jim Williams were both in this category, so there has been, and I'm sure still is, some excellent company. 

[(In)Sanity]

About every 6 months I'll clean everything up and within a week it's already a mess.   Somehow I still manage to get stuff done......and I always know where everything is

JMHO, but that's all that really matters.  Slobs Unite! 

BTW, recently departed Bob Pease and Jim Williams were both in this category, so there has been, and I'm sure still is, some excellent company. 

I friend of mine often reminds me that a new piece of test gear is not test gear at all.  It has to have stickers on it from past calibrations a few scuffs and some dents.   If the buttons, knobs or keys are all clean and neat...might as well throw it away.   Moral of the story is a messy bench with messy gear is a productive bench.

[nanofrog]

I friend of mine often reminds me that a new piece of test gear is not test gear at all.  It has to have stickers on it from past calibrations a few scuffs and some dents.   If the buttons, knobs or keys are all clean and neat...might as well throw it away.   Moral of the story is a messy bench with messy gear is a productive bench.

I like it.

BTW, I'll take any of the zero history, unscuffed, undented gear he wants to toss any day.  I'll add the dents, scuffs, ... myself, given enough time.   

[(In)Sanity]

I friend of mine often reminds me that a new piece of test gear is not test gear at all.  It has to have stickers on it from past calibrations a few scuffs and some dents.   If the buttons, knobs or keys are all clean and neat...might as well throw it away.   Moral of the story is a messy bench with messy gear is a productive bench.

I like it.

BTW, I'll take any of the zero history, unscuffed, undented gear he wants to toss any day.  I'll add the dents, scuffs, ... myself, given enough time.   

I get his point,  but all of my old test gear looks close to new.   He's just saying it should be used...not dusted off daily.   So I avoid dusting

[Bored@Work]

 It is like with art. Normal people call it dirt. Connoisseurs call it patina and character.

[Martin.M]

This is a full extendet Rohde+Schwarz SWOB III, a 90 pounds cold sweeper test unit, working up to 1,2GHz 
I use it for IF coils and so on. Upside a HF/UHF mV-Meter made by Kathrein.

greetings
Martin

[SeanB]

Its maybee my eyes that are old, but is there a cassette player on the shelves there?

Looks like one Akai and one Onkyo tape deck.

[prenato]

Finally got to it. Here's my home lab: