Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Got a win in the end for less than the price of mouser delivery...   

Yup.

Rule of TEAcquisition #69: Why pay for shipping on components when you can turn that money into useful stock...? 

mnem

[Cerebus]

Brick veneer doesn't stand up to earthquakes too well. I lived only 3 miles from the epicentre of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and on all my neighbour's houses the brick veneer pretty much just peeled away from the side of the house. However, the wooden frames behind the brick veneer generally stood up pretty well and there were no catastrophic collapses.

There weren't that many double brick houses close to the epicentre but those that were fared quite badly suffering major collapses. Brick chimneys nearly always completely collapsed.

Unsurprising. A single header thick veneer in stretcher bond is half-way to falling down to begin with. For an earthquake zone you want to build the 'veneer' in Quetta bond, which is one stringer and one header deep, has a reinforced concrete infill and when you've finished is substantially more than a veneer. Named after the earthquake prone Quetta in what is now Pakistan where during the Raj the British Army had problems with traditional brick walls falling down and had to invent a way of dealing with it. But, it's gonna cost you, so people don't do it and one little earthquake leaves you with a wall to rebuild.



Also good if you live somewhere where this keeps happening to you:



That's a double thickness wall in stretcher bond (if they'd used English bond, alternating headers and stretchers, it might have stood up better). Look quite how much has been taken out by an impact at one end. Like I say, half-way to falling down to begin with and only good for garden walls, if that.

[bd139]

It’d be easier if we had less twats to knock ‘em down 

[Cerebus]

Got a win in the end for less than the price of mouser delivery...   

Yup.

Rule of TEAcquisition #69: Why pay for shipping on components when you can turn that money into useful stock add another development board to carry you over the free postage limit which can then gather dust in the cupboard of doom for years...? 

mnem

TFTFY

[Cerebus]

It’d be easier if we had less twats to knock ‘em down 

There is always the 'evolutionary advantage' construction, which is a very thin wall followed by a 20 foot pit with steel spikes at the bottom. Not sure if you'd fall foul of the 'mantrap laws'? "Your honor, there was a four foot high brick wall on all sides of the pit, that can hardly be construed as a 'mantrap' with such efforts expended to keep people out." 

[mnementh]

After getting an almost brend new Knipex 97 53 04 for 87 pesos. I am looking for another tool where I can burn my money.

May have to ask, do you use a cable tie tool?   

I actively discourage their use. It's way too easy to over-tighten cable ties with one of those. If you're tightening cable ties by hand the shear pain involved if you pull too tight stops you doing it. Use a cable tie gun and you've no sensory feedback that you're trying to go too tight. If you have a lot of cable ties to apply, and you use the thing very judiciously, they are a nice convenience, but on balance I think for most work the risks outweigh the benefits.

Use them in my MDF/IDF and I'll fire your ass. With actual    fire.

They ruin CatXxx cables and CAN break fiber; I've had to redo too many cabinets because of those fucking things. Yes, the twist & cut convenience is enticing, but to get a clean cut you have to ratchet the tie down so tight it compresses the pairs together on Cat5x and crushes the separators inside the sheathing of Cat6x cables, destroying the deliberate isolation of pairs and inducing capacitive coupling with the braid on shielded variants. With Cat7 adoption already underway, I see these things as an evil that must be killed off sooner rather than later.

mnem
KILL IT. KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

[Cerebus]

That's exactly the kind of nastiness I was thinking of.

[mnementh]

Got a win in the end for less than the price of mouser delivery...   

Good old eBay, once more to the rescue, not sure how you managed to get 25 off the 1000uF 35V one for just £4.53 though, maybe the Jammy Git award is coming your way 

Think the dude has a lot of NOS and weird stuff in stock. Either that or the order will be cancelled when he finds out he cant drop ship them from mouser at that price 

1000x this. Or, he thinks he can sub Suxon Chinese crapacitors and you won't notice. 

If NOS, lets hope not from the Reagan era. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

I have noticed lately a short supply of certain caps Im after for repairs, especially axial ones, but radial ones now also. Hope its not a thing, 2020 has had enough things go wrong this year.

........I am the Capacitor (Lizard) King....   I can do anything.   -----Jim Morrison   

Edit...     

COUSIN!!!

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Got a win in the end for less than the price of mouser delivery...   

Yup.

Rule of TEAcquisition #69: Why pay for shipping on components when you can turn that money into useful stock add another development board to carry you over the free postage limit which can then gather dust in the cupboard of doom for years...? 

mnem

TFTFY

LOL IRL!   

Well, we won't hold it against you for trying to make yourself engage in a little self-improvement. Would violate the nerd code.

mnem
*makes mental note (again) to actually crack the cover on his digital copy of A Byte of Python*

[mnementh]

That's exactly the kind of nastiness I was thinking of.

Which... the molested cabling nastiness or the "Scorch now, ask questions later!" nastiness? 

mnem
 

[med6753]

OK, I finally figured out what was going FUBAR with this Type 1A2 plug-in. See schematic. The waveform was OK until it got to Q143 then post that transistor highly distorted. It appeared that the transistor was being driven outside it's linear region and indeed it was. The DC bias was way off. The reason? R150 (Variable Attenuator Balance) was so far off it drove the circuit nuts. And why was it off? It was so freaking dirty that just touching the control with a screwdriver made the trace bounce like it was on a trampoline plus cleared the distortion. And surprisingly it was the same issue on Channel 2. I thought I had cleaned these controls back when I first got the plug-in but apparently not. Deoxit applied. Now fixed.



   

[tautech]

Brick veneer doesn't stand up to earthquakes too well. I lived only 3 miles from the epicentre of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and on all my neighbour's houses the brick veneer pretty much just peeled away from the side of the house. However, the wooden frames behind the brick veneer generally stood up pretty well and there were no catastrophic collapses.

Oh yes Chch was a real mess 10 yrs back and we felt bad for anyone that went though that.
We all learned about liquefaction from that.

A few years back my neighbor whom has a piling business set up some gear down there to help with the rebuild and I did dozens of week long trips to Chch as his groundman installing up to 12m piles with a big vibrator on a 22t excavator. Lots of residents were still very jumpy at any vibration and we often had to calm them as the gear we had produced a lot of vibrationary power @ ~2k/cycles/min.
Yep seen the carnage and helped a bit to fix it.
You mention timber framed buildings, yes they stood up far better however some of the crappy ground strata in some suburbs was mostly the cause of the building damage as it acted like jelly when the quakes hit.
Over near Jade stadium the ground was real poo and with the bedrock closer to the surface the vibrations we produced did some strange shit where neighbors had little shaking as we worked yet someone a few 100 yds away got pummeled to where stuff wouldn't stay on a table.
Chch fair rewrote the NZ building foundation legislation to even here in Auckland 1500km away requirements have roughly doubled.

Edit to add
Piling a job of 500 4.8m timber piles we vibe'd outta sight in 2 days ! Not far from the old Jade stadium.


300 in, 200 to go.

[Zucca]

That's exactly the kind of nastiness I was thinking of.

I keep my money in the pocket then, amazig it is the first time TEA is saving me money.

[Cerebus]

Don't worry, we'll soon find a way to fix that for you.

[Robert763]

The zip tie tools used in aerospace normally have a calibrated tension control with a dial. Nice but expensive.
E.g Hellerman EVO7
Some info here

https://www.hellermanntyton.co.uk/competences/cable-tie-guns

The Mark 9 pneumatic is very nice but a bit expensive at £3000 
https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-tie-guns/1439310

[AVGresponding]

If it's someone here overbidding me on the Tek P6021 current probe, I'll ask the dwagon to kick you in the goolies   

Throw a lowball at this instead https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Black-Star-Digital-Multimeter/133515240244


The 5316B arrived, eventually, and the cost to call DHL turned out to be only 29p, so not too bad. It's cosmetically a bit shabby and missing one button cap, but works fine.

Ordered a set of Brymen test leads from Welectron, also shipped via DHL. Delivered to my safe place yesterday (doorstep), pic of parcel there sent as proof of delivery, but when I got home, nothing! FFS
Had a good mooch about but nowhere to be found. My doorstep can't be seen by passersby, so random theft is highly unlikely. DHL courier? One of my neighbours?

Dropped in at the Post Office depot on my way to work this morning to pick up whatever the two parcels are from the card they left, turns out one of them was the DHL one. Postie must have picked it up for safekeeping.
Faith in humanity restored, even if he/she did cause me some anxiety, the motivation was a good one.


Just missed a 5245L, went silly money in the dying seconds, damn thing isn't even shown working!


Been repairing our No-Climb Testifire 2000, fecking halfwits keep dropping it etc, no respect for a piece of test gear that cost a bag.



The fault was in a ribbon cable that connects the IR trigger sensor to the main pcb. It's been pushed back in too many times and the conductors broke where the stiffening tab ends. This is a small flat ribbon with 1mm pitch, I've flashed the breaks with solder but it'll break again quite easily.
Time to read the riot act!

[0culus]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422897

'Nuff said. 

[med6753]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422897

'Nuff said. 

Put on your boots and pass the shovel. 

[mnementh]

OK, I finally figured out what was going FUBAR with this Type 1A2 plug-in. See schematic. The waveform was OK until it got to Q143 then post that transistor highly distorted. It appeared that the transistor was being driven outside it's linear region and indeed it was. The DC bias was way off. The reason? R150 (Variable Attenuator Balance) was so far off it drove the circuit nuts. And why was it off? It was so freaking dirty that just touching the control with a screwdriver made the trace bounce like it was on a trampoline plus cleared the distortion. And surprisingly it was the same issue on Channel 2. I thought I had cleaned these controls back when I first got the plug-in but apparently not.
Deoxit applied. Now fixed.             

Don't hesitate to go back there the next time something flaky happens. My experience has shown that I'm much more diligent than I think I am in such matters; when I think I cleaned something but doing it again fixes the problem, usually it means I DID clean it the first time but there's a more essential fault that the cleaning just "temporarily fixed".

mnem
Murphy runs & hides when the cleaning solvents come out. Unless he can find a spark...   

[mansaxel]

After getting an almost brend new Knipex 97 53 04 for 87 pesos. I am looking for another tool where I can burn my money.

May have to ask, do you use a cable tie tool?

No, but I'd continue on the Knipex track, with a Superknips (78 31 125 among others) and/or a Zangenschlüssel (86 05 150 for instance, but there are many sizes to collect). I have them both, and they're indispensable.  Of course there's a cable tie connection here; the Superknips has its edge set out so that it cuts the cable tie flush. No more sharp protrusions.  A bobbin of lacing twine is another thing I'd reccomend, for instance https://www.elfa.se/sv/flaetat-najgarn-52x0-3mm-111-21n-polyamid-457m-alpha-wire-lc134-bk088/p/15500583?queryFromSuggest=true

[tautech]

If it's someone here overbidding me on the Tek P6021 current probe, I'll ask the dwagon to kick you in the goolies   

Not me.....resisting the urge.
You're best to snipe them with a few seconds to go with a bid as large as you're willing to pay and keep fingers crossed that no one has enough time to bid over you.

[Saskia]

Speaker test CD arrived.

I have also that stuff, should I send you the .FLAC?

please go ahead.
my favorite test CD is Lincoln Mayorga, The missing Linc Vol II, Sheffield Lab

[mnementh]

After getting an almost brend new Knipex 97 53 04 for 87 pesos. I am looking for another tool where I can burn my money.

May have to ask, do you use a cable tie tool?   

No, but I'd continue on the Knipex track, with a Superknips (78 31 125 among others) and/or a Zangenschlüssel (86 05 150 for instance, but there are many sizes to collect). I have them both, and they're indispensable.  Of course there's a cable tie connection here; the Superknips has its edge set out so that it cuts the cable tie flush. No more sharp protrusions.  A bobbin of lacing twine is another thing I'd reccomend, for instance https://www.elfa.se/sv/flaetat-najgarn-52x0-3mm-111-21n-polyamid-457m-alpha-wire-lc134-bk088/p/15500583?queryFromSuggest=true

Those 64HR XLs look tasty... I loves my Xurons; they're surgical sharp and meet so precisely you can cut a hair lying on the bench, but they're pretty soft high-carbon steel. They are best treated as a consumable supply rather than a tool, as they wear dull in a matter of months rather than years. And def not good for ferrous materials.

mnem
 

[Saskia]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422897

'Nuff said. 

Put on your boots and pass the shovel. 

I was once offered a satellite dish, pick up only, for grabs, but I would have had to arrange for transport, etc myself.

10m diameter. Ummm .... won't fit through the door ...