When Its In Mess

[Mechatrommer]

I got this picture just before i tidy up my desk this afternoon, and think would like to share. In this situation, i'm starting to lose focus, so i have to stop periodically during a certain hobby project, to tidy the mess up. I wonder if there is messier out there.

[david77]

Hehe. Don't I know it... I always thought I'm the only messy guy in electronics.
This is the current state of my electronics lab while working on my recent project. And I had to tidy things up twice now, because I also start to lose focus. And I start to lose my tools...
I've got two of most of my tools because they start to disappear and I end up having to buy new stuff.
Then I finally tidy up and things I was missing for six months start to materialise out of nowhere. I think I've got some kind of black hole somwhere around here 

[saturation]

I think good mess means good work.

Cover of Bob Pease's book:



David, is that PSU homemade, with the analog V and A meters and copper colored front? Is that a Trio-Kenwood Audio Signal Generator immediately to its right?  On the right shelf, a similar case design with copper colored front, a home made DMM?  Is that an HP VOM beside the analog scope, looks like a Leader, with the green screen and yellow and blue leads ... looks like its still getting use.

[david77]

Yup, that PSU is homemade dual 0-35V/5A. Quite beefy and robust. The case is also homemade from heatsinks and circuitboard. The frontpanel on the desk is going to replace the old one. The analog meters are chinese crap.
It is indeed a Trio sig-gen. The other copper coloured thingy is another homebrew sig-gen (XR2206). And the VOM is a HP 400F. It gets a lot of use as I design a lot of audio gear. I prefer the analog meter for that kind of stuff. It goes down to -80dB (0,1mV) and has a nice dB scale that most of my other meters lack.

The small oscilloscope on the shelve is actually a Hameg 107, something like 45-50 years old and still going strong. At least since I replaced all electrolytics and a few tubes. Yes, not a single semiconductor inside! I still use it from time to time to check waveforms or as a portable unit as it is much smaller than my Hitachi. It really isn't very usefull today as it's only got a bandwith of 2MHz and some other limitations compared to a more modern scope. But I like it and otherwise it would have ended in a skip.

Circuit board is quite handy to build cases from as it's easy to work with and easy to get a reasonable good finish. And I've got a ton (literally) of the stuff as off-cuts from a former employer.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Than's not a mess - you can still see some bench. A real mess is at least 1.5 layers deep.
And on the floor. And everywhere else....