Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

I guess I scared him off. Asks for help. Offer it. Crickets. 

I don't bite, I really am a nice guy. 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/need-vertical-position-fiber-glass-shaft-for-465/

Yes you do. Don't lie! 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

   Welp... figured out why it's a oil-leaking bitch.

This bolt hole in the blower shroud  is no more, which means the oil-filler tube is not held tight against the rubber seal in the crankcase. Yes, I have a donor unit... but the shroud looks like it got pooped on by a grease monster and of course, the shroud is where they put the dataplate, so engine model #, displacement, DOM etc are all wrong.

*sigh*

mnem
 

Brazed a washer or two on a few Briggs and the like over the years. Simple fix if you have the gears. 

Can't count the number of times I've done exactly that. I also know from personal experience that soldering just doesn't hold; too much flex in the thin sheetmetal, too much gap that needs to be filled. It HAS to be brazed or welded. Alas, the Tool-Dwagon is still short 90% of his shop... 


      

Fortunately, I'm smart enough to outwith the designers and make this shroud work on the wrong family of engine (LEV vs TVS); my twelve-dollah heat gun worked a treat to swap dataplates over without harm, so a little Dremel abuse to duplicate the cutout for larger muffler, and trial/error layout/redrilling screw holes for the big plastic shroud and we were in business.


   

A thin smear of Albino Smurf Sperm (white instead of blue Silicone RTV Sealant ) as insurance and it's now sealed like it should be.


   

Now it's all back together; the red blower housing looks kindof dumb if you get too close, but the plastic shroud hides most of it. Aside from repairing the oil leak, I did all the usual service: Degrunge entire deck/motor with dish soap in a spray bottle/brush/garden hose, clean & graphite dry lube recoil starter axle shaft, dismantle & oil cables with Chain Lube, dismantle front drive and a little moly grease on all the bushings & wheel axles.

The best part... despite all my tender mechanical ministrations, it STILL starts and runs on the first pull!  Not bad for 42 Canadian Pesos!

I definitely got my money's worth out of my $15 parts mower; it was the organ donor for: Lower handle section/hairpin clips, 2 wheels, blower housing, oil filler tube as loose one had worn to the point it couldn't seal, and a handful of missing/stripped out bolts/washers. The only "new part" was a $2 spring for the drive pulley arm. And of course, I reassembled the parts unit with all my discards... the Ferengi in me is tempted to put it back up on Kijiji, and I may HAVE TO just for the space. 

Now it's time to tackle the weedeater & leaf blower... and I already can see that the tubing they included in my kit is the wrong size. 

mnem
 

[med6753]

About freaking time you got done with that mower. I thought you were making a career out of it. 

J/K......good work. 

[med6753]

Since I can't do anything on the Type 310A until the capacitors arrive (Tomorrow) I figured I would repair the handle.

[mnementh]

Wait... what...? Where's the booty-fab? That looks entirely too nice! 

J/K... nicely done. 

mnem
"If you fix it, they will ogle." ~grand-dad

[mnementh]

About freaking time you got done with that mower. I thought you were making a career out of it. 

J/K......good work. 

Thanks... you do pay for your stuff one way or another; either money out of your pocket or hours out of your life.

mnem
I don't know whether to be pleased or depressed; I just realized that I spent more on gas & gas cans than I did the lawnmower.

[med6753]

Wait... what...? Where's the booty-fab? That looks entirely too nice! 

J/K... nicely done. 

mnem
"If you fix it, they will ogle." ~grand-dad

Booty? OK.....your wish is my command.  (Careful what you ask for)

[mnementh]

But you knew that.



A word of advice, having done more leather-work than I care to admit to: If you make the handle with a triple-lap, you get several benefits for the extra leather used:

1: The extra layer makes a integral spacer for the bails; looks tidier.
2: You get a better handhold due to thicker, more rigid grip area. If you glue the layers together in the grip area with contact cement, even better.
3: You can do the strap with 2 rivets and get the same strength as 4, and they're right by the bail, so not in the grip area.
4: For a more "bespoke" look, you can use binding post screws/Chicago screws/sex bolts, available in brass, stainless and aluminum from Amazon or your local homeowner hell in a variety of lengths and they're cheap:



mnem
 

[Saskia]

Wait... what...? Where's the booty-fab? That looks entirely too nice! 

J/K... nicely done. 

mnem
"If you fix it, they will ogle." ~grand-dad

Booty? OK.....your wish is my command.  (Careful what you ask for)

TBH I prefer this one ...
https://youtu.be/5ueJ4-lTa1s

[ch_scr]

Wait... what...? Where's the booty-fab? That looks entirely too nice! 

J/K... nicely done. 

mnem
"If you fix it, they will ogle." ~grand-dad

Booty? OK.....your wish is my command.  (Careful what you ask for)

TBH I prefer this one ...
https://youtu.be/5ueJ4-lTa1s

I'm more on the virtual side:

[AVGresponding]

I'm not sure I'd trust 3D printed parts for HV. ABS is a sponge and PLA is full of air pockets. What the breakdown voltage? Creepage distance etc? No idea, then I wouldn't put it between me and a kV source. The original parts look like they are Nylon.

McBryce.

Paint it with corona dope   

[AVGresponding]

What the actual, flying, fuck?!? Just received my Rapid order.

In a box measuring 165cm x 22cm x 16cm...     wtf have they sent me?

Answer: mostly packing     All this for a bag of stuff weighing a couple of hundred grams, and would fit in an A4 jiffy bag, and a tube of IC sockets, 63cm long. Someone in the warehouse clearly just couldn't be arsed to find a more appropriately sized box.   

[Ice-Tea]

Wait... what...? Where's the booty-fab? That looks entirely too nice! 

J/K... nicely done. 

mnem
"If you fix it, they will ogle." ~grand-dad

Booty? OK.....your wish is my command.  (Careful what you ask for)

Oh God. From past experiences, I'd better not look at the next 5 pages or so..

[mnementh]

TBH I prefer this one ...

Oh... is it time for White boys doin' The Robot and Moonwalking to go 'round and 'round the internet again...? 

mnem
*veteran of a thousand psychic wars meme recycle-cycles*

[AVGresponding]

You've not lived until you're seen Peter Crouch do The Robot as a goal celebration

[mnementh]

Oh, I didn't mean it as a dig; pretty much anybody has more groove than this old white boy. I'm as bad as Draxx.

Just... whenever white boys need to show they got mooves, the anchor of their routine is always The Robot and Moonwalking... it's so cliche that calling it cliche has become a cliche. 

Just cuz I can't move doesn't mean I don't have a well-developed appreciation; just like the dog and the butterfly. But I've gone out with girls whose random throwaway moves got more funk than pretty much every white person on the planet. PUT TOGETHER. And then she get her groove on and your face just melts.

mnem
 

[AVGresponding]

Luckily, he's a much better footballer than a dancer.

[Saskia]

don't they have enough money to get a ball for each player ?

[25 CPS]

That 270 looks promising, a lot nicer than my 635 when it came through. I have done a basic cleanup on it; looks a lot nicer than this now but I still totes need to get after those jacks with a .22 cal brass brush and some silicone spray. Can't complain; got mine for CAD$13.55. If all I do is leave it perched it on the mantle, I've gotten my money's worth out of it.

mnem
 

Thanks.  I haven't done anything to these meters at all other than hook them up and do some low voltage DC tests on them.  They'd all benefit from a cleaning at minimum, for sure.  Your 635 looks like it cleaned up nicely though.  I have a 635 as well and the only thing I did was scrape out the 35 year old batteries and the crusty crud from where they leaked all over.  Unfortunately, one of the AA battery contacts broke and went sailing into the garbage can along with the leaked battery it was attached to.  I don't think it could've been saved though.  The batteries were really far gone.  I should've taken pictures of the inside of the 635 but instinct kicked in and I got the batteries out of there as fast as I could to prevent any more damage from happening but that ship had probably sailed at least a decade ago so there wasn't any need to rush on my part.  Have you tried out your 635 at all though, even a couple of DC volt checks just to make sure the movement's still working?

Nice collections , I envy you, as I'm still looking to add Triplett and AVO into my family, and its been for so many years of waiting. 

My current Simpsons ...

That's a beautiful collection of Simpsons you have there!  Give it time, you'll have an Avo and a Triplett too.

To @25 CPS and may be others too that are still not aware of this forum's problem on image attachment and inline embedding, to deal with the bug temporarily, please use the 2nd attachment, skip the 1st one as the forum will screw things up. 





There is also another example -> HERE

I know.  It's frustrating.

As it stands right now, to do the pictures, I need to post from my phone and that's really cumbersome.  Combine that with pictures apparently being completely broken when previewing, I'd have to do a post that actually goes live and then work backwards to edit in IMG tags.  It's actually the reason why I haven't posted the pictures from testing the Northern Electric or the Triplett while I try to figure out some other kind of workaround.  I was really looking forward to posting the Northern Electric because it has something that looks like an early version of the famous/infamous reverse banana plug connectors.

I hope you guys enjoyed the pictures of the AVO and the 270 in action in the two posts I did put up, messed up as the posts were with the image problem.

[med6753]

Oh, I didn't mean it as a dig; pretty much anybody has more groove than this old white boy. I'm as bad as Draxx.

Just... whenever white boys need to show they got mooves, the anchor of their routine is always The Robot and Moonwalking... it's so cliche that calling it cliche has become a cliche. 

Just cuz I can't move doesn't mean I don't have a well-developed appreciation; just like the dog and the butterfly. But I've gone out with girls whose random throwaway moves got more funk than pretty much every white person on the planet. PUT TOGETHER. And then she get her groove on and your face just melts.

mnem
 

It's a proven fact that white boys can't dance, including this white boy.

[bd139]

What the actual, flying, fuck?!? Just received my Rapid order.

In a box measuring 165cm x 22cm x 16cm...     wtf have they sent me?

Answer: mostly packing     All this for a bag of stuff weighing a couple of hundred grams, and would fit in an A4 jiffy bag, and a tube of IC sockets, 63cm long. Someone in the warehouse clearly just couldn't be arsed to find a more appropriately sized box.   

At least you got what you wanted. A couple of years back they sent me an empty box 

Oh and then there was that time they sent me 1n4004's, one per bag, times 100.

And the time I got someone's SSD and some gloves in my order.

And the time I got all the wrong capacitors.

And the time I got a carefully labelled and hand picked empty heat sealed CPC labelled bag which was supposed to have a switch in it.

I'm hoping they send me something nice one day because fucking finders keepers.

As for twerking, robots own as at it already:

[Saskia]

I can do only Pogo and Stomp. That's enough to me, and I can get to ramming speed pretty quick.

[BU508A]

Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz dancing for ten hours.

[Cerebus]

Wait... what...? Where's the booty-fab? That looks entirely too nice! 

J/K... nicely done. 

mnem
"If you fix it, they will ogle." ~grand-dad

Booty? OK.....your wish is my command.  (Careful what you ask for)

Oh God. From past experiences, I'd better not look at the next 5 pages or so..

You can look at them, but it might help, like it does for unpleasant medical procedures, to take a hefty dose of Midazolam or one of the other benzodiazepines that actually blocks the formation of new long term memories while it's circulating in your system.

(Really, that's what the medics do. They sedate you, not so that you don't find the process unpleasant, but that so you forget it and will let them do it again next time if they need to.)

[Saskia]

https://youtu.be/oWGZdYNpaSo