Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[nctnico]

That picture brings back some memories. My uncle has a Harrison lathe as well (it may even be the '12' because yours looks identical) and I learned how to use a lathe on it. After 4 decades it still works well and IMHO better than the cheap Chinese lathes. Do you also have the option to change bits quickly?

There were metric and imperial versions 155, 165 and this 12, maybe more. Probably in your part of the world he had a metric one, no ?
I don't have a quick change toolpost only a 4" 4 sider that I usually have 2 tools in. The factory 3" one was a bit small so I swapped it out for a 4" that I had. An adjustable quick change would be a great upgrade as once setup you don't have to shim every tool to centre height and it really matters to get it right, especially for carbide.

My uncle's lathe is a metric one but the only difference is in the dials.

It won't be, if it's a 155 or 165 it's likely to have a 6mm pitch leadscrew. The imperial models had 1/4" so without the quick change Metric/Imperial changeover lever like mine you have to acquire a selection of gears to allow a full range of pitches. Even with the option I have it won't do them all, IIRC I miss some obscure pitches 19 and 27 or something like that.

That lever is missing on my uncle's one and I have changed the gears for him several times in the past as part of getting to know the machine.

... QC toolpost would've been a real luxury and probably lots more expensive than today. Not sure I'll ever get one as I use lots of HSS so you're grinding them up a bit and tool centre heights can be set by just sliding the tool steel in or out of the holder. Easy.

I googled some toolposts and the ones from Dickson triggered my memory. I see what you mean by 'luxury'. On Ebay they fetch a very decent amount of money even in used condition. BTW no HSS in my uncle's machine shop! All widia. Back in his moonlighting days he'd sometimes create swarf up to several meters long while machine some truck parts. It came curling right out of his shed!

[Cubdriver]

Yes, only 3 years 1971, '72, and '73 i believe thats when he 8500A was put on the line was when this was taken off.

8500A. 7 segment LED.  Bleh.   

-Pat

[Specmaster]

Yes, only 3 years 1971, '72, and '73 i believe thats when he 8500A was put on the line was when this was taken off.

8500A. 7 segment LED.  Bleh.   

-Pat

Ooh, lovely a real nice warm red glow, just what we need in the UK today, its snowing 

[bd139]

No snow here. Just to piss me off, they are digging the road up right outside my house right now at 11PM (I live on a major A-road in London and they do the work at night).

Lots of LEDs though. Got my CPC christmas lights order through. 1200 white LEDS on 120mm of line. Power supply is hooky as fuck so it's going to turn into a project

Ebay has some interesting stuff today (finally). Watch list populated.

A Tektronix 2225 just went for £250 (what the hell?!?) this evening. Previous one went for £170. Have decided to shift mine while they're still hyped and throw the money in the test gear pot.

Upgraded my E3630A power supply this evening with a nice Bourns 3590S 10 turn pot for +/-15v control. The old knob doesn't fit any more because it is keyed so I ordered two knobs from Keysight. After being bounced to a poor lady in Barcelona to take credit card details, the total bill for two original knobs including delivery was only £3.70! Keysight FTW. This is a 1994 dated power supply, so 23 years old, and you can get active spares for it for bugger all 

[Specmaster]

You can keep the road works, I'd rather have this pretty, white fluffy stuff anyday.
Thats a lot of LEDs on a 120mm of line??

Yeah, been watching a few bits and bobs on the ole bay but not secured anything yet, put an offer in on a Philips PM2527 meter that the seller was looking for £65 or best offer, I upped it 3 times but the last offer he ignored. Selling it without leads etc and so he was unable to test it so  was his £65 about??

Watching a few other things at the minute and I think I'll be putting my 8505A back on the bay soon, its just too big for my needs, leaves me with no bench space really. I might also put the Goldstar 100HHz scope up as well now I've got the 1740A working nicely.

Keysight FTW for sure if they are still supporting 23 year old gear, might be forced into having a look for some decent 2nd hand gear from them if thats the case.

[Specmaster]

Someones taking the piss surely?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GW-Instek-GDM-8135-3-5-digit-LED-single-display-Dual-Sdigit-Multimeter-with-and/162660686113

[bd139]

Someones taking the piss surely?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GW-Instek-GDM-8135-3-5-digit-LED-single-display-Dual-Sdigit-Multimeter-with-and/162660686113

Yes very much taking the piss. CPC sell it: http://cpc.farnell.com/gw-instek/gdm-8135/bench-dmm/dp/IN01532

You can keep the road works, I'd rather have this pretty, white fluffy stuff anyday.
Thats a lot of LEDs on a 120mm of line??

Yeah, been watching a few bits and bobs on the ole bay but not secured anything yet, put an offer in on a Philips PM2527 meter that the seller was looking for £65 or best offer, I upped it 3 times but the last offer he ignored. Selling it without leads etc and so he was unable to test it so  was his £65 about??

Watching a few other things at the minute and I think I'll be putting my 8505A back on the bay soon, its just too big for my needs, leaves me with no bench space really. I might also put the Goldstar 100HHz scope up as well now I've got the 1740A working nicely.

Keysight FTW for sure if they are still supporting 23 year old gear, might be forced into having a look for some decent 2nd hand gear from them if thats the case.

Sorry 120m of line, not 120mm! Interested to see how it's wired up. Shitty cheap chinese wire so probably get dimmer towards the end

Some of the sellers are really taking the piss with the pricing these days. I've seen so many things I just skip through shaking my head in shame. This for example: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/263345629094

Well Keysight is really "old HP who shook off the shitty computers, HPE and all the scientific stuff" so it's the root of HP in there and it appears they haven't lost it. I am extremely impressed.

[Specmaster]

They want a lot for a 1975 vintage 10MHz scope, stupid money, it seems to get crazy every Christmas on Ebay with people looking to cash in on gullible buyers.

Yes, I have to say I do like HP gear, I might go that 3466A without the 2A fuse holder and socket, it's working and I could always rig it and use just as a ohm and volt meter till I can find a suitable donor, I've got the other one if I need to do current. Talking of 3466A's look at this  fool https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-3466A-DIGITAL-MICROSOFT-MULTIMETER-4-1-2-digits-I418/312001887897

[tggzzz]

I put an offer in slightly short of that figure and it was declined. Don't really want another thumping great big monster on my bench but all of those LED's lured me in 

Not sure what you are referring to (top tip: use the quote button), but Datron 1061As have Panaplex displays. Much nicer than LEDs!

[Specmaster]

I put an offer in slightly short of that figure and it was declined. Don't really want another thumping great big monster on my bench but all of those LED's lured me in 

Not sure what you are referring to (top tip: use the quote button), but Datron 1061As have Panaplex displays. Much nicer than LEDs!

Just short of the £115 mentioned in your earlier post regarding the Datron 1061As, and yes I agree, the Panaplex displays are nice but the meter is really too big for my small workspace, already have a 8505A which I might put on Ebay as it is equally as large.

[bd139]

also panaplex displays are completely unobtainable if they die.

[neo]

I've never understood the stigma that large items have, in my mind their size is an affirmation of quality and ease of service.

[bitseeker]

Ero-Shan, that's an impressive, ongoing collection of TEA and ECC goodness. Congrats on the scores. Then again, you're making us look like slackers by comparison.

[Berni]

I've never understood the stigmata that large items have, in my mind their size is an affirmation of quality and ease of service.

Exactly!

Tho sometimes i get surprised by just how big some test gear gets. I just got my HP sampling scope mainframe (HP 83480A) and the box seamed rather large, upon opening it it did just have about 10cm of expanded foam bags all around it (Nice job by the seller) to pad it out. For some reason i was expecting the scope to be a bit deeper than the plugin modules that fit in to it as they are pretty sizable on there own. Well turns out the scope is about 65cm deep.

It does pass self tests fine, tho the CRT might need a tweak since the blue color looks like it might be a little offset from the red and green. Just need to make some room in the rack cabinet for it.

But the 20GHz sampling plugin module for it is still sitting in a USA airport for over a week now. I hope nothing went wrong with that because that plugin module was the expensive part of this sampling scope endeavor.

[DC1MC]

Two Solartron 7045 for  £25.00

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mutimeter-7045/132405846374

UK Only 

[tggzzz]

also panaplex displays are completely unobtainable if they die.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. There are some on fleabay, and some visibly working ones inside my broken Solartron 7075.

I'm considering selling the 7075's cable and the displays (possibly mounted on the PCB), since I suspect they are worth more than the 7075 itself.

[bd139]

Watch what happens the moment one dies. There's a mechanism in the universe called quantum unavailability. The moment you need something, it disappears off the planet, even though someone was selling some about 10 minutes before your requirement appeared.

I had a broken Heathkit panaplex display clock for 5 years. The moment I got rid of it, a whole load of working displays turned up on ebay.

[Specmaster]

Watch what happens the moment one dies. There's a mechanism in the universe called quantum unavailability. The moment you need something, it disappears off the planet, even though someone was selling some about 10 minutes before your requirement appeared.

I had a broken Heathkit panaplex display clock for 5 years. The moment I got rid of it, a whole load of working displays turned up on ebay.

Too bloody true, happens all the time.

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[Cerebus]

I've never understood the stigmata that large items have, in my mind their size is an affirmation of quality and ease of service.

Well you come from a country where hardly any town is more than 200 years old and the towns are mostly separated by open countryside that is easy to expand into. So building a home is, in many places, just a question of paying for building materials and that tends to be what limits the size of a property. Here in Europe, with towns that have been around 1000s of years in some cases, and tend to be limited in expansion by squeezing up against the next town over, the limiting cost tends to be the price of the land, so homes are much smaller than the typical 'murican home.

Our East London terrace house is on a plot 7 metres wide and perhaps 25-30 deep. There's a house on sale around the corner for £500,000 - that's $675k USD for perhaps 200m² of floor space (2150 ft²), so $320 USD/ft². So it's not the kit that's expensive, it's the room it takes up at about $40 a cubic foot. And of course you can't stack kit to the ceiling and need space around it to to access it so that's probably closer to $150-250 a cubic foot of gear just in space for it to live in.

Oh, and I think you meant 'stigma', 'stigmata' are something else entirely...

[Cerebus]

Watch what happens the moment one dies. There's a mechanism in the universe called quantum unavailability. The moment you need something, it disappears off the planet, even though someone was selling some about 10 minutes before your requirement appeared.

It's the quantum entanglement of unobtainium particles. As one device is destroyed, the entanglement of the unobtanium particles causes the other items it is entangled with to simultaneously annihilate. It works on a local level too, such as between 13A fuses in plugs and the ones in your tool box.

[bd139]

Our East London terrace house is on a plot 7 metres wide and perhaps 25-30 deep. There's a house on sale around the corner for £500,000 - that's $675k USD for perhaps 200m² of floor space (2150 ft²), so $320 USD/ft². So it's not the kit that's expensive, it's the room it takes up at about $40 a cubic foot. And of course you can't stack kit to the ceiling and need space around it to to access it so that's probably closer to $150-250 a cubic foot of gear just in space for it to live in.

Same problem here on the other side of London. Got 5 people living in a 2 bed maisonette so not a lot of room. My bench is pretty tight so I've gone for space optimised kit at the moment. Try working on this space. The dining table is opposite this so I swivel around to the laptop that lives on it



TEA + London = difficult.

[Specmaster]

I've never understood the stigmata that large items have, in my mind their size is an affirmation of quality and ease of service.

I can only think that that this belief that larger equates to quality and ease of service etc must stem from ones own personal surroundings. My workshop / lab / office is all housed in a room 3.3 by 1.7m and that was a bedroom in my house, so yes something measuring 460mm by 440mm is going to be massive when its equivalent is only 280mm by 240mm, so in the same footprint I can fit 3 of the smaller units, therefore I can fit in more kit into my smaller space. That is a reflection of the high density of population that we, in the UK have per square mile when compared to larger countries like the USA for instance,

The UK has 702 people per sq mile, this is in direct contrast to the USA which has 86 per sq mile, so its natural given the vast space available to you to build things on a larger scale, judging by the sizes of the average house garage over there with 3 or 4 cars in it, over here, that footprint would have an entire house standing on it with and maybe a small garage thats about 700mm wider than an average car and about 6m in total length.

My lawn at the front is only 1m deep and a street pathway of 1m and then its roadway, thats the average over here, compare that with the residential areas over there, vastly different. My back yard is about 10m by the width of the house and the only access to it is via the house, no side or rear access whatsoever, so thats where the stigma associated with large items comes from, the need to be able to live in the given space, especially with a family as well just increases the pressure to use space wisely.

[neo]

I've never understood the stigmata that large items have, in my mind their size is an affirmation of quality and ease of service.

Well you come from a country where hardly any town is more than 200 years old and the towns are mostly separated by open countryside that is easy to expand into. So building a home is, in many places, just a question of paying for building materials and that tends to be what limits the size of a property. Here in Europe, with towns that have been around 1000s of years in some cases, and tend to be limited in expansion by squeezing up against the next town over, the limiting cost tends to be the price of the land, so homes are much smaller than the typical 'murican home.

Our East London terrace house is on a plot 7 metres wide and perhaps 25-30 deep. There's a house on sale around the corner for £500,000 - that's $675k USD for perhaps 200m² of floor space (2150 ft²), so $320 USD/ft². So it's not the kit that's expensive, it's the room it takes up at about $40 a cubic foot. And of course you can't stack kit to the ceiling and need space around it to to access it so that's probably closer to $150-250 a cubic foot of gear just in space for it to live in.

Oh, and I think you meant 'stigma', 'stigmata' are something else entirely...

  my house is only approximately 2000 ft², though i do have 4 acres of land but half of that is a 2 acre hole in the ground. So no, i cannot say i'm cramped, but neither can i say i'm living in a sprawling mansion on a hill. _{It might be worth noting i live a long ways from anything and pay for the space of land with extremely slow internet.}

As for stigmata and stigma, small error due to the lateness of the hour in which it was written.

[Specmaster]

I've never understood the stigmata that large items have, in my mind their size is an affirmation of quality and ease of service.

Well you come from a country where hardly any town is more than 200 years old and the towns are mostly separated by open countryside that is easy to expand into. So building a home is, in many places, just a question of paying for building materials and that tends to be what limits the size of a property. Here in Europe, with towns that have been around 1000s of years in some cases, and tend to be limited in expansion by squeezing up against the next town over, the limiting cost tends to be the price of the land, so homes are much smaller than the typical 'murican home.

Our East London terrace house is on a plot 7 metres wide and perhaps 25-30 deep. There's a house on sale around the corner for £500,000 - that's $675k USD for perhaps 200m² of floor space (2150 ft²), so $320 USD/ft². So it's not the kit that's expensive, it's the room it takes up at about $40 a cubic foot. And of course you can't stack kit to the ceiling and need space around it to to access it so that's probably closer to $150-250 a cubic foot of gear just in space for it to live in.

Oh, and I think you meant 'stigma', 'stigmata' are something else entirely...

  my house is only approximately 2000 ft², though i do have 4 acres of land but half of that is a 2 acre hole in the ground. So no, i cannot say i'm cramped, but neither can i say i'm living in a sprawling mansion on a hill.

As for stigmata and stigma, small error due to the lateness of the hour in which it was written.

I think Cerebus was sort of generalising that most Americans do live in a bigger house and on I far bigger plot of land where expansion is a real possibility as opposed to the way we Brits don't have usually have either of those luxuries. [emoji6]

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[neo]

Having the land leaves me options but due to the hole in the ground, holler as its called,  my options are limited to the front. Though also of note is it cost an exorbitant amount of money to build anything other than a tent.