Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[AVGresponding]

A company I prevously worked for made equipment that was sold all over the world. Most had IEC power inlets. We used a Seward Supernova or two for production testing. However for some reason the senior manaement decided we could not do our own PAT  So they emplyed a contractor. He came in over the weekend. Amonst otherthings the passed a diecast box withe a IEC inelt but nothing else, not even earth connection, that was on my bench.  They had been told not to go into the R&D section. They alss took all the safety (T earth pin) plugs off the high power lasers. these were only supposed to be plugged ito the door interlocked outlets.
In production they took all the new and bagged IEC leads in stores and tested them. For the EU North American and Austrailian leads they cut the plugs off and fitted 13A ones 
His tester was a battery powered one with no high current earth or flash capability. He didn't get paid........

 

EDIT: It does beg the question though, why the hell wasn't he chaperoned?

[mnementh]

A company I prevously worked for made equipment that was sold all over the world. Most had IEC power inlets. We used a Seward Supernova or two for production testing. However for some reason the senior manaement decided we could not do our own PAT  So they emplyed a contractor. He came in over the weekend. Amonst otherthings the passed a diecast box withe a IEC inelt but nothing else, not even earth connection, that was on my bench.  They had been told not to go into the R&D section. They alss took all the safety (T earth pin) plugs off the high power lasers. these were only supposed to be plugged ito the door interlocked outlets.
In production they took all the new and bagged IEC leads in stores and tested them. For the EU North American and Austrailian leads they cut the plugs off and fitted 13A ones 
His tester was a battery powered one with no high current earth or flash capability. He didn't get paid........

 

EDIT: It does beg the question though, why the hell wasn't he chaperoned?

     This guy, that's why.

mnem
'nuff sed.

[med6753]

Cleaned all the dust out of the 7A19 plug-in and IPA'ed all the switch contacts. Decided to hold off on any additional deoxit unless it really needed it.



And it didn't need anything additional. It's a happy camper.



Next project. This Type 1A1 plug-in. It originally came with the Type 547. When I tested it on the Type 535A it had 2 glaring problems. First was insufficient vertical gain and the square wave looked like crap. Oddly, same issue on both channels. Which makes me suspicious. It might be the result of some tweak happy Gorilla. So we'll see.

I will remove the Type 1A2 from the Type 547 and insert this one for troubleshooting. And the Type 547 has to be put back on it's side to work on it. I'm getting proficient at putting that beast on it's side without hurting myself since I've had to do it so many times over the past few months. But bench 2 is really taking a beating. 

   

[Robert763]

A company I prevously worked for made equipment that was sold all over the world. Most had IEC power inlets. We used a Seward Supernova or two for production testing. However for some reason the senior manaement decided we could not do our own PAT  So they emplyed a contractor. He came in over the weekend. Amonst otherthings the passed a diecast box withe a IEC inelt but nothing else, not even earth connection, that was on my bench.  They had been told not to go into the R&D section. They alss took all the safety (T earth pin) plugs off the high power lasers. these were only supposed to be plugged ito the door interlocked outlets.
In production they took all the new and bagged IEC leads in stores and tested them. For the EU North American and Austrailian leads they cut the plugs off and fitted 13A ones 
His tester was a battery powered one with no high current earth or flash capability. He didn't get paid........

 

EDIT: It does beg the question though, why the hell wasn't he chaperoned?

Well they would not pay overtime for a competent employee to do the testing so why would they pay for one to watch a contractor? 

[AVGresponding]

EDIT: It does beg the question though, why the hell wasn't he chaperoned?

Well they would not pay overtime for a competent employee to do the testing so why whould they pay for one to watch a contractor? 

Good grief...   

Did they change their minds when they saw the repair bill?

[mnementh]

Well gee, call me an idiot then.  The winter gloves I wear provide warmth AND allow me to adequately grip the steering wheel safely.

O.K.: "You're an idiot!". There, happy now?

Edit: You know, this whole saga of how a quick anecdote on why I decided that a heated steering wheel was not in fact a completely pointless waste of space as I'd originally though turned into you bitching about the completely incidental  precise choices of gloves and tools for car clearing on a cold winter morning might make people suspect that you're a miserable little old anti-social git with nothing better to do than moan at people for no good reason. Oh, hold on, you are.

While we're on the subject, the first present I remember my father buying me, and the first gloves I remember owning, was a pair of boxing gloves.  Just saying... 

mnem
*agitating-ily*

[Robert763]

EDIT: It does beg the question though, why the hell wasn't he chaperoned?

Well they would not pay overtime for a competent employee to do the testing so why whould they pay for one to watch a contractor? 

Good grief...   

Did they change their minds when they saw the repair bill?

No. They just used a different PAT contractor.
There seems to be a belief amonst some senior managors thet by subcontracting this sort of thing that they are reducing their liability or/and risk of legal sanction against them personally. In fact it does nothing of the sort. The company is responsible. If a item is tested (properly) at 9AM but bevlops a fault that causes injury at 9:30AM the company is still liable. Thre is case law for this. It was non electrical. A lifting aid at Vauxhall in Luton IIRC. It as tested reguarly but failed and acused a back injury.
The thing that drives PAT is insurance. Many commercial policies require portable appliance testing.
 

[med6753]

When Itty Bitty Morons was rolling in cash, up until 1992 or so, if you needed something you got it. No questions asked.

After the bean counters took over you couldn't buy a pencil unless you got at least 2 levels of management signature. 

[mnementh]

   Completely OT: WTF Home Depot...?



One thing I've noticed the last few seasons is: Home Depot has these effing awesome Halloween and Christmas decorations... but for some reason, you can't seem to get them up here.

For years, even in Tejas, Gary and his cousins have been a Holiday-time hit; and for the pittance they ask (~$US110-180) actually a pretty fair bargain for 10-12ft tall inflatables. But last year (or was it 2019?) they released a couple of really interesting ones; a 12-foot poseable skeleton (with really creepifiyin' moving LCD eyes) and a smoke-breathing green dragon.

   

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-69-in-Halloween-Giant-Black-Silver-Dragon-21PA94025/315534548#overlay

Right now, if I shop the Niagara Falls store, I can buy this fellow... yeah, he's a whopping US$400, but he's almost 6 feet tall, animatronic, plus he roars and will even breathe smoke if you connect a fog machine to a pipe in his arse. If you look up dragon on homedepot.com, you get 6 pages of hits, including over a hundred Holiday and other decorations, with all the dragons, skeletons, creepifying mummies, darkly robed zombie-oid and witchily figures you can dream of.   

https://www.homedepot.com/b/Holiday-Decorations/N-5yc1vZbd6e/Ntk-elastic/Ntt-dragon?NCNI-5&sortorder=desc&sortby=price





Meanwhile, on homedepot.ca, this is what you get. Literally wallpaper and flower seeds. Oh, and a wee little 3 foot Gary, who is not available yet and from past experience he never comes available.

I've been watching now for 2 1/2 holiday seasons... and I never see this awesome stuff come available, even if I did have the money to blow on any of it.

So seriously... 

EDIT: Yes, I'm not so daft I don't know the obvious probable answer: COVID. But seriously; in the face of such unnatural circumstances, decorating for the holidays is one of the few "sociable from a distance" activities and exercise you can do reasonably safely around your home. To take that away seems unconscionable to me.   

mnem
*prepares for all the worst jokes at the tinkerdwagon's expense*

[Ice-Tea]

The plot thickens.. I had a 'virgin' 199C. Used it only with an original charger. The battery was dead, obviously, installed a new one. Worked fine. Concerning a concern from someone: the sense resistor value was spot on, so no chemical degradation or something... I then "refreshed" the battery. Worked fine, battery guage showed "full" afterwards.

I then had run down completely (untill it turned off). Had 3.5h+, so that's not too bad.

Plugged the charger back in in order not to send out the device with a depleted battery. This morning, the battery was hot (some 40C according to the NTC). Device still turned on, showed battery not full.

That was also the last time it turned on. The sense resistor is still fine, but it doesn't turn on with either battery or adapter.

Bleh.  Can't sell them like this. Will need to dig a lot deeper.

That sucks. Lots of money in the balance with in even a dozen of those bad boys out of inventory. I wish I were a bit closer and could take a crack at one, just for fun.

Dumb question... have you tried a new replacement battery from Fluke? Maybe they have some form of doomsday countdown timer in the supervisor IC like some laptop batteries were alleged to have back in the day. 

mnem
 

Like "unless you feed me a new original battery, you"re fucked"? Eh, wouldn't think so. Only batteries and NTC in the pack. And The Signal Path has made a LiOn mod for it, he didn't report any issues.

Kinda thinking it would be cheaper/easier converting them all to LiOn. Eh, well, supplies came in. Let's have some fun. To be continued.

*EDIT* Also: not excluding sending you one as an option. Shipping is, well cheaper, than blowing up two of these a week.

[Andrew_Debbie]

Houston, we have an intermittent.    

Last time, we left the Dana 5100 hunting madly ---> https://youtu.be/nkUiT873iIk 

This afternoon I put it back on the bench, shorted the inputs and turned it on.   0.00012 ..    30 minutes later it was still stable so I nulled  the DC offset.


    

I hooked up the 2.5000V reference.  After turning off the computer and desk lamp:




This is in spec.     DC accuracy is +/- (.0.0025% + 2 counts)

392Ω 1% Dale



I need better test leads.     Dana recommend 2 wire + shield for volts and the usual 4-wire leads for resistance.   They offered several leads for the 5100 including a sample and hold probe.   


I'd like to send the meter off for calibration / adjustment.   Until I find and fix the intermittent fault that would be throwing money away.

[AVGresponding]

Houston, we have an intermittent.    

Last time, we left the Dana 5100 hunting madly ---> https://youtu.be/nkUiT873iIk 

This afternoon I put it back on the bench, shorted the inputs and turned it on.   0.00012 ..    30 minutes later it was still stable so I nulled  the DC offset.


    

I hooked up the 2.5000V reference.  After turning off the computer and desk lamp:




This is in spec.     DC accuracy is +/- (.0.0025% + 2 counts)

392Ω 1% Dale



I need better test leads.     Dana recommend 2 wire + shield for volts and the usual 4-wire leads for resistance.   They offered several leads for the 5100 including a sample and hold probe.   


I'd like to send the meter off for calibration / adjustment.   Until I find and fix the intermittent fault that would be throwing money away.

That is a very nice meter. Colour me jelly.

[mansaxel]

These little MP1584EN-based switchers are noisy AF, but pretty damned good otherwise; I keep a few on hand, as I treat them like Lego building blocks. They will handle a 15-20V drop at 2A all day long if you stick the the PCB to a large metal mass with some silicone thermal pad. Big plus, they aren't known to fail Vin-Vout short-circuit.

Noise is sawtooth with lots of weeee-rid harmonics.  I usually put a 220-470uF electrolytic right across Vin, and a 470-1000uF right across Vout. Tames them pretty well for non-critical applications. Tin-box and/or remote location also helps a fair bit with what noise you'll see at the destination; they are also a wee little radio station broadcasting at ~1MHz. 

Ah, yes, the sawtooth, we remembers it. And confirmed, it seems to be 1MHz. Can confirm. I'm thinking of something along 1mF on output, and a little less on input, paired with a 0,1µF ceramic and some serial inductance.

[mnementh]

When Itty Bitty Morons was rolling in cash, up until 1992 or so, if you needed something you got it. No questions asked.

After the bean counters took over you couldn't buy a pencil unless you got at least 2 levels of management signature. 

By then the priesthood in the white coats had all long since retired and were no longer around to hold rein on the bean counters; they were left in charge by default once all the money not nailed down went home with the priesthood.

In all honesty, it's not like there weren't huge, glowing signs screaming that their old business model was going extinct long before they actually started hemorrhaging money; can you really blame people who had the option for taking a fat retirement over rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic..?

It just sucks that all the money they made on the backs of people like you never trickled down to... well, you.

But that is the core fallacy of supply-side economics... it's always "Just hold out a little longer and you'll get your chance to feed at the trough too."

Be glad you got as much as you did; those who followed didn't even see the toaster-leavins you got.

mnem
"Pension plan...? What pipe you been smokin'? We live in Texas; the state that successfully took Social Security away from pretty much everyone." ~previous employer

[mansaxel]

The thing that drives PAT is insurance. Many commercial policies require portable appliance testing.
 

It is blame shifting, nothing but, at least in the degenerate form that's been described here. And, as you write, not a very successful blame management at that. When PAT became the norm in UK, some 25 years ago, IIRC, where I worked did quite a bit of import from the UK, so we kept reading about this, and concluded "someone is trying to insure themselves against stupidity."

[mansaxel]

In all honesty, it's not like there weren't huge, glowing signs screaming that their old business model was going extinct long before they actually started hemorrhaging money; can you really blame people who had the option for taking a fat retirement over rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic..?

I beg to differ on the business model. Renting compute to people is very much alive. It still, on average, is a much better deal for the landlord than the customer.

IBM never made money on direct sales, not compared to the cashflow on rentals. I still remember being flabbergasted the first time I heard about the AS/400 "memory upgrade" -- it involved a CE, and a floppy disk. The CE came, took down the machine, inserted the disk, made some incantations (all 8 characters long) on the console, IPLed the machine, and hey presto! The previously-installed RAM, that had been disabled, now was available.  It felt wrong, because it is.

Mind you, ECC RAM for POWER machines never was cheap. I once bought 32GiB RAM for a RS/6000 server, back when most big e-commerce ran on allegedly mega-large machines that were maxed out at 4GiB. That cost about $200000, and was, by one order of magnitude, the most expensive part of the machine.

[AVGresponding]

Ok, some quick and dirty probulation of the LM2596 buck regulator. Channel 1 is the output, channel 2 the input. Apologies for the beheaded voltage reading on the loaded pic, the lead digit is a 4.

Unloaded



Loaded to 500mA



No power at all



As you can see, slightly noisy environment...   

[mnementh]

These little MP1584EN-based switchers are noisy AF, but pretty damned good otherwise; I keep a few on hand, as I treat them like Lego building blocks. They will handle a 15-20V drop at 2A all day long if you stick the the PCB to a large metal mass with some silicone thermal pad. Big plus, they aren't known to fail Vin-Vout short-circuit.

Noise is sawtooth with lots of weeee-rid harmonics.  I usually put a 220-470uF electrolytic right across Vin, and a 470-1000uF right across Vout. Tames them pretty well for non-critical applications. Tin-box and/or remote location also helps a fair bit with what noise you'll see at the destination; they are also a wee little radio station broadcasting at ~1MHz. 

Ah, yes, the sawtooth, we remembers it. And confirmed, it seems to be 1MHz. Can confirm. I'm thinking of something along 1mF on output, and a little less on input, paired with a 0,1µF ceramic and some serial inductance.

   

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/3d-printing/3d-printer-yet/msg3004770/?topicseen#msg3004770

This one has been feeding ~8W of LEDs and a 2A/12V rail for experimental fans on my 24V-powered Diggro/Longer Alpha 3 for a year and a half now. I prefer the D-SUN ones as they seemed a bit cleaner (probably better MMLCCs/inductor) and more importantly, better pot that isn't as touchy as the current crop of cheapies. I'll often find myself replacing the pot with a 0603 resistor on these. But dang, the D-SUN have almost become a "premium brand" in its own right nowadays.

The RAMPS1.4 controller on this 3DP is noisy AF in its own right; I can't even use the popular micro SD-to-standard SD adapters that are a popular mod on most 3DP to put the card slot somewhere convenient. I'm not sure if that is entirely the controller or in part the touchscreen, which has its own 64-bit uPC embedded. Yes, that's right... a 64-bit uPC serial-connected to a 8-bit uPC controller board doing the actual work. Go figure. 

mnem
 

[AVGresponding]

The thing that drives PAT is insurance. Many commercial policies require portable appliance testing.
 

It is blame shifting, nothing but, at least in the degenerate form that's been described here. And, as you write, not a very successful blame management at that. When PAT became the norm in UK, some 25 years ago, IIRC, where I worked did quite a bit of import from the UK, so we kept reading about this, and concluded "someone is trying to insure themselves against stupidity."

Not even remotely successful blame-shifting. The manager responsible for organising the PAT schedule is liable, period. Said manager is also required to understand PAT regulations as well as every aspect of testing.

[Specmaster]

Apparently, it is illegal to drive with snow on the roof of your car as it could slide down and block your vision.

It is not illegal per se, at least not in the UK; the rule states that drivers must "remove all snow that might fall off into the path of other road users" (rule 229), but you'd only likely face prosecution if it actually did cause an accident. The only actual direct legal offence is if it obscures your reg plate.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/driving-in-adverse-weather-conditions-226-to-237

This is why:

Equally it could also slide down your windscreen and cause you to have an accident, especially if you are braking, and hence why I always understood it to be an offence to have snow on the roof.

[TERRA Operative]

Well, I bought a new scope. 1Ghz TDS784C for 66,483 yen.
 I think I'm at, what... 11 scopes now I think? I should sell some....

And for dessert, I bought a 334A Distortion Analyzer for 12,800 yen too. 
(Photos from the listings).

One step further down the calibration rabbit hole, now I'll fix this stuff up, to fix up the stuff I need to use to fix up the stuff I actually want to use... Possibly with a few more steps of fixing stuff in between..
Soon I'll have all the gear ready to re-calibrate the Tek 2467 scope I accidentally wiped the cal memory on when replacing the backup battery.... 

Such is the great circle of life TEA. 

[AVGresponding]

Equally it could also slide down your windscreen and cause you to have an accident, especially if you are braking, and hence why I always understood it to be an offence to have snow on the roof.

It's more likely to slide all the way down the bonnet and in front of the car, especially on a modern. If it got under the wheels and you lost traction it would be "exciting", as you would be braking at the time, almost certainly.

Reading the rules through and the laws annotated to them, my understanding is the offence is not the snow on the roof, but if it subsequently causes one of the issues outlined. It's not really very clear, and I suspect it would be fiendishly hard to obtain a conviction without it having had some pretty serious consequences. I honestly can't see the average copper writing out an FPN over this, unless he/she was having a really slow and boring day.

[factory]

Todays really stupid postal charges on eBay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294459893718, £145.20 by UPS from Virginia to the UK, for a Fluke 87 

This isn't a new problem, UPS international has been about three times the price of regular USPS for many years, hence why I've rarely bought anything where it's the only service offered.

The Fluke doesn't look a very good buy either, at least three problems mentioned, including non-functional capacitance range and buggered input jack plastics. 

David

[Specmaster]

A company I prevously worked for made equipment that was sold all over the world. Most had IEC power inlets. We used a Seward Supernova or two for production testing. However for some reason the senior manaement decided we could not do our own PAT  So they emplyed a contractor. He came in over the weekend. Amonst otherthings the passed a diecast box withe a IEC inelt but nothing else, not even earth connection, that was on my bench.  They had been told not to go into the R&D section. They alss took all the safety (T earth pin) plugs off the high power lasers. these were only supposed to be plugged ito the door interlocked outlets.
In production they took all the new and bagged IEC leads in stores and tested them. For the EU North American and Austrailian leads they cut the plugs off and fitted 13A ones 
His tester was a battery powered one with no high current earth or flash capability. He didn't get paid........

 

EDIT: It does beg the question though, why the hell wasn't he chaperoned?

Well they would not pay overtime for a competent employee to do the testing so why would they pay for one to watch a contractor? 

It also just highlights the difference between the average contractor and an engineer, especially if said contractor used to be a house basher, then he'd never ever come across such plugs and sockets, equally never come across clean earth varieties either.

[AVGresponding]

Well, I bought a new scope. 1Ghz TDS784C for 66,483 yen.
 I think I'm at, what... 11 scopes now I think? I should sell some....

And for dessert, I bought a 334A Distortion Analyzer for 12,800 yen too. 
(Photos from the listings).

One step further down the calibration rabbit hole, now I'll fix this stuff up, to fix up the stuff I need to use to fix up the stuff I actually want to use... Possibly with a few more steps of fixing stuff in between..
Soon I'll have all the gear ready to re-calibrate the Tek 2467 scope I accidentally wiped the cal memory on when replacing the backup battery.... 

Such is the great circle of life TEA. 

Unless I'm badly mistaken about current exchange rates, that's a pretty damn good price. Congratulations!