Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Yes, it does indeed sound like about time to get a vacuum desoldering gun or station. Save the braid for more delicate work and/or SMD pad cleaning.

You can use the desoldering station / vacuum gun for SMD pad cleaning, leaves them nice and flat.

[Specmaster]

Fluke have just released a new meter that can measure volts and current at the same time without needing any probes, measures up to 1,000V in 1v steps. I wonder how long it will be before someone scales the system down to make it suitable for electronics use as well?

http://en-us.fluke.com/products/electrical-testers/t6-1000-electrical-tester.html?trck=t6#techspecs

There is a short video of it there as well.

[Kilo Tango]

Here's a desoldering gun I bought a few years back. It still works well, I just replaced the mains cable and plug but still going strong. After 40 years !.


Ken

[Specmaster]

Wow, thats sure was a few years ago, nothing at all like today's ones.

[Kilo Tango]

Yes, built to last. I have used a weller desoldering station, but it always seemed to need fixing, servicing, cleaning out this and that. I seemed to spend longer fixing it than actually using it !

Ken

[ChrisLX200]

I do have a desolder gun now - a 474++, but I only got it a couple of weeks ago. It works well but there are limitations, especially when all the pins on TH boards have been hammered flat and then soldered (my pet hate). I have to use a soldering iron first to lift the pin up enough so I can get the gun onto it, then wiggle it about to straighten/free it. I hope the braid will last longer now I have the gun but for a bunch of rotary switches, banana sockets and so on I recovered recently the braid is still the best solution.

[Mr. Scram]

Fluke have just released a new meter that can measure volts and current at the same time without needing any probes, measures up to 1,000V in 1v steps. I wonder how long it will be before someone scales the system down to make it suitable for electronics use as well?

http://en-us.fluke.com/products/electrical-testers/t6-1000-electrical-tester.html?trck=t6#techspecs

There is a short video of it there as well.

I would worry it'd be very dependent on how you place the probe exactly, as Dave's videos of other current probes have shown.

[djos]

Yes, it does indeed sound like about time to get a vacuum desoldering gun or station. Save the braid for more delicate work and/or SMD pad cleaning.

You can use the desoldering station / vacuum gun for SMD pad cleaning, leaves them nice and flat.

Indeed, i use the same method myself, I tin them with Rosin Core solder then slurp it off with the gun and voila, nice clean, shiny & flat pads! 

[mnementh]

Thats certanly a quick way to get your multimeter count up quickly. I only have like 7 multimeters here...well and a keithley on the way...Well guess im in the right place.

Here's another. 


mnem
*Agitating-ily*

[Berni]

Here's another. 


mnem
*Agitating-ily*

Oh yes the quality oozes from that one Probably literally once the plastic case catches fire and melts upon doing something on mains with it.

Tho one of those 7 multimeters is that cheap Aneng AN8008 that has been popular around the forums lately. I quite like it for a quick poke around, surprisingly accurate too. Tho my favorite is still the Keithley 2015.

[iainwhite]

GAS health alert!
European TEA members should not look at the Buy/Sell forum thread with the used Rigol DM3058 Digital Multimeters for £240 each

[URI]

GAS health alert!
European TEA members should not look at the Buy/Sell forum thread with the used Rigol DM3058 Digital Multimeters for £240 each

Huh, saved, it's only a 5 1/2 Digit Multimeter*. 





*- I'm not up to offend anyone. I have six 6 1/2 Digit Multimeters of four different types sitting here and that's the reason why I don't need another one with 5 1/2 Digits. I'm sometimes dreaming of 8 1/2 Digits but I won't get the OK of my finance minister..

[bd139]

I'm not sure I want to go near Rigol DMMs myself. Lots of reported fuckery with them.

Plus and I'm going against TEA here, I don't actually really need 5.5 digits 

[mnementh]

Here's another. 


mnem
*Agitating-ily*

Oh yes the quality oozes from that one Probably literally once the plastic case catches fire and melts upon doing something on mains with it.

Tho one of those 7 multimeters is that cheap Aneng AN8008 that has been popular around the forums lately. I quite like it for a quick poke around, surprisingly accurate too. Tho my favorite is still the Keithley 2015.

There's a reason I refer to them as the "Little Red Box of Damifino". They're still better than no meter at all, and really all you need for what I get them for - to give away at the flying field to noob RCers.

I have the Aneng AN8002 and 8008... aside from looking like something out of the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, they're pretty good little meters for low-voltage work. I have a Ragu 17B+ I got just because it was $9.99 and I had to see what actually came; like the AN8008 it has a few "amusing quirks" in the firmware, but there's a lot of meter in there and the fit & finish is amazing for the price. Not sure about the current price of $23-ish.

I like keeping a cheap meter or two around for those "I'm gonna do something stoopit" moments, so I'm not tempted to use a decent meter.


mnem
*tzzzt*

[URI]

[..]
Plus and I'm going against TEA here, I don't actually really need 5.5 digits 

There's only one thing that's better then lots of Digits of resolution: MORE Digits of resolution.
Don't hesitate, come on over to the dark side of metrology! We take care of accuracy here also..     

[bd139]

I refuse to be a voltnut

I'm currently working on being an edge-nut. Got myself a whole bag of SMD goodness from RS this morning to see if I can build something to measure rise time on my scope collection

[ChrisLX200]

Quote from: iainwhite on Today at 02:23:21 AM

GAS health alert!
European TEA members should not look at the Buy/Sell forum thread with the used Rigol DM3058 Digital Multimeters for £240 each


Damn. I looked...

[Mr. Scram]

I don't think they're dual measurement units, right? I could use one of those.

[Specmaster]

I refuse to be a voltnut

I'm currently working on being an edge-nut. Got myself a whole bag of SMD goodness from RS this morning to see if I can build something to measure rise time on my scope collection

Instead be a wavenut 

[bitseeker]

Yes, it does indeed sound like about time to get a vacuum desoldering gun or station. Save the braid for more delicate work and/or SMD pad cleaning.

You can use the desoldering station / vacuum gun for SMD pad cleaning, leaves them nice and flat.

I guess I need more practice. I tend to have a teeny bit of leftovers.

[bitseeker]

Plus and I'm going against TEA here, I don't actually really need 5.5 digits 

Me either. I got 6.5-digit ones.

[mnementh]

mnem
    

[Ero-Shan]

Only need five DMMs? Let's see here. With four power rails, that's four voltages, so four DMMs for that. Unless those four do simultaneous voltage and current (or alternating, if you don't mind relays clacking), you need four more DMMs. Then, you'll probably want to monitor one or two other locations in the device. Well, that's 10 so far. And it's not good to use your last meter because that's when you know you'll need one more. So, you need at least one or two spares. A dozen DMMs sounds pretty good despite having only two hands and eyes.

Excellent, I have successfully justified all my currently operational DMMs.

Sorry, I only stumbled upon this today. Maybe I'm in the clear? (Of course, those are not all ... they're about half the lot.) 

[bitseeker]

Wow, that's quite a tower. What are the DMMs on the bottom? I can't quite make out the labeling on the front panel.

[Ero-Shan]

Wow, that's quite a tower. What are the DMMs on the bottom? I can't quite make out the labeling on the front panel.

They're Solartron 7150.

And after I've finally got my DC505A working again (see repair thread), I eventually started the work on the 3458A with its NVRAM problem. Desoldering 'em proved to be far more problematic than I thought (after having had so much fun with my new desoldering gun). I couldn't make the tip transfer enough heat to the tiny pads (there's enough space, why did they have to make them so small?). So I remembered what I read in the HP Bench Brief yesterday and tried with a manual sucker. This worked rather good (to my surprise). Put in sockets and read the cal ram with my newly acquired programmer (got it for this very job!). Comparing the data with what was read via GPIB a few weeks ago showed it to be identical. That I took as a good sign. 

I've put the cal ram back into the socket and added two 32k x 8 RAMs from my parts box to substite the DS1230s. Got an (expected) checksum error, but otherwise, the machine seems to work well.

Good thing I kept a few of those 256 kib RAMS.