Thought some of you might find this at least vaguely interesting (in a "tool porn" sense if nothing else). I never had a proper electronics "lab bench" at home until (very) recently... for the longest time, my meager collection of tools, parts, and gear lived at the local hackerspace, and I had to drive there to work on anything.
But, lurking in the corner of my living room was a crappy old table with a particle board top that was sagging under the weight of a bunch of old books, magazines, and random computer parts. As it happens, I had a little bit of extra money from my year end bonus, so a few weeks ago I cleared off that table, ordered a bunch of new kit, and started building an approximation of "the bench I always wanted" (within the constraints of space and money that I'm operating under).
The inital version of the bench, after most of my new gear arrived, and still using the crappy particle board top for the bench:
As you can see, this is not exactly the sturdiest setup in the world, and I was actually worried that it might collapse under the weight of my gear. And there's an oscilloscope that hadn't been delivered yet when this was taken:
So the crappy old piece of particle board had to go, replaced by a series of 1x6 boards, screwed into place, and a layer of 3/4" sanded plywood screwed down into that:
Finally, I have a nice sturdy, smooth, flat surface to support my equipment!
The re-assembled bench, mostly complete:
This was supporting the whole lot before:
Finally, after adding some of the high-temp rubber ESD matting (those two independent mats have been jumpered together since this picture was taken).
My monster breadboard in use for some experiments with using shift registers with the Arduino:
The rest of the photo gallery is here if anybody wants to see:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/v4Dy6WxGr1cVYXeR8In terms of test equipment / tools, here's what's on the bench:
Rigol DP832A power supply
Rigol DS1104Z Plus oscilloscope
Rigol DG4162 waveform generator
Rigol DM3068 bench multimeter
Rigol DS1102E scope (my first scope, bought a couple of years ago).
Hakko FX-951-66 soldering station
Leaton Digital Thermometer
Generic Chinese manufactured heat-gun
A small generic heat-gun
Not pictured due to space: Aoyue 852A++ Digital SMD Hot Air Rework Station
On order, arriving Thursday: HP 1660A Logic Analzyer
And if all goes well, sometime this year I hope to add a Rigol DL3021A programmable load. And maybe a used HP spectrum analzyer... and a frequency counter.. and a few more multimeters... and.. well... anyway...