Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

If any of you guys are contemplating making a Hakko T12 clone, I can tell you that I'm very happy with my one as I have come across the spec for the official product, Hakko FX-951 rated at 70W and it claims that the iron is heated to 330C, ready to go in just 12 seconds, hmm. Mine gets upto 370C in just 6 seconds, its a real speed demon.

[bd139]

That’s pretty good! My weller takes 40 seconds

Hoping mine arrives soon. Probably won’t though. How long did yours take to turn up?

[Specmaster]

Ah no not that one. Gumtree one. The 200 scopes one is in derby. This one is farnborough.

I am waiting for a tek 7603 to appear. SWMBO is going to hate me for that one. 

It’s a linear supply so nice noise free soldering 

Arh, that one in Prospect Road? He always seems to get scopes and he claims to get from garage sales / clearouts. If thats the one, I got my HP 1740A from him, takes him a long time to reply to emails and or text messages too.

[Specmaster]

That’s pretty good! My weller takes 40 seconds

Hoping mine arrives soon. Probably won’t though. How long did yours take to turn up?

Ordered on the 6th Dec, delivered on the 21st Dec, very pleased.

[bd139]

Ah no not that one. Gumtree one. The 200 scopes one is in derby. This one is farnborough.

I am waiting for a tek 7603 to appear. SWMBO is going to hate me for that one. 

It’s a linear supply so nice noise free soldering 

Arh, that one in Prospect Road? He always seems to get scopes and he claims to get from garage sales / clearouts. If thats the one, I got my HP 1740A from him, takes him a long time to reply to emails and or text messages too.

That’s the dude. And yes laborious communications and slow to answer the door. I reckon he’s locking the people he’s trafficking back in the cellar.

[Specmaster]

Could well be, it isn't the smartest of places either and I think go goes the name of S???N as well or at least that was his alias when I was last there.

[mnementh]

While is was tidying my lab / workbench, I found this nice 5V reference from Doug Malone (DMMcheck  r3 http://www.voltagestandard.com/DMMCheck.html).
I've bought it 2 years ago and I thought, I could hook it up with some of my DMM.
After 10 hours I got this:

(Lovely pics of multiple meters showing pretty much exactly 5V)

The 7510 and the 34401A were calibrated until Dec. 2016, the Fluke 8520A was repaired by myself (blown up tantalums) and the Solartron 7065 was a lucky purchase last year.
But the best thing is: they all do agree each other. 
And the DMM checker from Mr. Malone works really nicely. 

Yes, interesting bit of kit. I wonder why he discontinued it? All he has now is the VREF10-003 10V/0.003% reference and the PentaRef 5-way custom voltage reference; you'd think the DMMCheck would be his most popular product by far...

Scumtree. I have just complained about the dick.

I have however landed a TTi PL154 (15V 4A) supply just now so swings and roundabouts. That’s 55W of power at 13.8V with remote sense so nice little comms power supply

$20 and a couple resistors will get you 13.5V @ 1000W-120V/2100W-240V of crazy clean (for SMPS) power in a package roughly the size of a carton of coffin nails with the HP DPS-1200FB; meters and connectors not included in that pricetag, obviously. I use several of them to power pretty much everything on my bench; they're perfect for most any kind of comms abuse; that's where I learned about this particular model. One of the guys I fly with was using one of them to power a whole rack of 10m and packet-radio gear.



Plus, if you're feeling froggy, you can series-connect them for more voltage to do other things; though since the output on one of these supplies is "floated", I keep this one for experimental use ONLY. I have tested this one to 1750W on a single 120V connection before it tripped the breaker.

mnem
*Juicy*

[Specmaster]

Ah no not that one. Gumtree one. The 200 scopes one is in derby. This one is farnborough.

I am waiting for a tek 7603 to appear. SWMBO is going to hate me for that one. 

It’s a linear supply so nice noise free soldering 

That 7603 is a huge beast but for what? I don't see as it does anything particularly special compared to other scopes, like the 1740 for instance, ok it has interchangeable modules but it only has 5V per division, my Iwatsu does 10v and the HP can do 20v a division. And I think you're right SWMBO won't like the size of the beast, that won't sit on your bench thats for sure. 

[bd139]

mnem: that’s pretty impressive! I’ve got a large meanwell 24v unit on order from RS at the moment that is going inside a PA if I can get it clean enough. Not 1KW. Not sure why I’d do with a kilowatt other than smoke my antenna.

Specmaster: it’s about the mainframe. While it’s an excellent analogue scope with readout it also has some interesting capabilities which are much smaller than the equivalent standalone devices.

http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/7L12

http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/7CT1N

As for size, bench is extending by 1 foot so it’ll just fit

200 scopes woman has a 7623 with storage at the moment but it has a much smaller screen than the 7603 and also storage scopes are likely worn out by now.

Edit: also don’t forget that 5v/div+10x probe is 50v/div.

Edit 2: also it has the same footprint as the 1740A just taller.

[tggzzz]

Ah no not that one. Gumtree one. The 200 scopes one is in derby. This one is farnborough.

Ah. That bloke advertises moderately interesting stuff, but there's always been something tickling my mind about him. Seems there was some foundation for that tickle.

Thanks.

[Specmaster]

I see, its going to be used as a standard scope then, it comes with these modules or are they what you aim to get for it? I can't deny it, I had been looking at these for a while now but decided that I really can't house it so have given up on the idea. What drew towards them was the plug in modules, so if my requirements changed, I could hopefully get the right module and plug it in.

I saw that 7603 as well but discounted it because of what I said above.

Yep, I thought about the 10x probe switch as I hit send, but then, 10 x 20 is 200v/division, if we're playing top trumps, I win that round 

[bd139]

I’ll camp out for the right plugins. It’ll get used as a spectrum analyser mainly I suspect. Once you start doing RF stuff after a few MHz the frequent domain is more interesting. I reckon I could get by with a 20Mhz analogue scope and a decent spectrum analyser TBH. Curve tracer for binning parts based on gain and matching diodes for mixers.

5000v/div?  http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/P6015

[Specmaster]

Ah no not that one. Gumtree one. The 200 scopes one is in derby. This one is farnborough.

Ah. That bloke advertises moderately interesting stuff, but there's always been something tickling my mind about him. Seems there was some foundation for that tickle.

Thanks.

Yes, it seems I was lucky with him. I think it was because it wasn't working probably and maybe others before me had seen it and walked away, but even then when I driven the 200miles round trip, he still tried to get more out of above the price we agreed on before I set off on the journey. I too had the jitters about this guy as he takes so long replying and then he only gave a me a window to collect in of about 60 minutes. I made a note at the time to avoid him next time.

[BU508A]

I don't think the DMM checker is being sold any more.

Yes, that's true. And imho a bummer. I do really like this little box.
Easy to carry to somewhere else to check meters. Flea markets for example.

[Specmaster]

BD139: I wonder if I can get a 1000:1 for the HP? 20,000v/div smashed the ceiling, no bloody use for it mind you so a pointless exercise, you know that 1740 really is a pretty good scope, if only it was in line with the normal form factor, it is long old beast.

[Mr. Scram]

That’s pretty good! My weller takes 40 seconds

Hoping mine arrives soon. Probably won’t though. How long did yours take to turn up?

What Weller is that? I think mine is a little quicker.

[bd139]

BD139: I wonder if I can get a 1000:1 for the HP? 20,000v/div smashed the ceiling, no bloody use for it mind you so a pointless exercise, you know that 1740 really is a pretty good scope, if only it was in line with the normal form factor, it is long old beast.

Ah you win. Could go poke it on a power line and see what’s going on

That’s pretty good! My weller takes 40 seconds

Hoping mine arrives soon. Probably won’t though. How long did yours take to turn up?

What Weller is that? I think mine is a little quicker.

TCP 50W. Recent unit from WTCP51 kit. Time to second click.

[Specmaster]

The heater on the Weller looks to be the same as that on my Duratool desolder gun.

[Mr. Scram]

Ah you win. Could go poke it on a power line and see what’s going on

TCP 50W. Recent unit from WTCP51 kit. Time to second click.

At what temperature? I might very well be too optimistic about my WD2M.

I just realized I may have sounded like a boy saying he can piss farther. That wasn't my intention

[bd139]

370oC

[mnementh]

mnem: that’s pretty impressive! I’ve got a large meanwell 24v unit on order from RS at the moment that is going inside a PA if I can get it clean enough. Not 1KW. Not sure why I’d do with a kilowatt other than smoke my antenna.

Yeah, I've seen one of these little bricks powering a whole bench of 12V radio gear; they're made for server duty, so pretty much designed to be running at 80% capacity for years on end.

I also have a gorgeous 1KW 48V power supply from a Marconi/FORE TSX1000/TNX1100 ATM Backbone switch; thing is absolutely a work of art with massive caps and ferrite transformers, and the whole shell is anodized AL and heavy gauge plate. I got it because it was cheap and NOS, but still haven't figured out how to get it to turn on outside the switch it was made to go in.

I’ll camp out for the right plugins. It’ll get used as a spectrum analyser mainly I suspect. Once you start doing RF stuff after a few MHz the frequent domain is more interesting. I reckon I could get by with a 20Mhz analogue scope and a decent spectrum analyser TBH. Curve tracer for binning parts based on gain and matching diodes for mixers.

5000v/div?  http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/P6015

Dielectric fluid... is that anything like taillight fluid or muffler bushings? 

I don't think the DMM checker is being sold any more.

Yes, that's true. And imho a bummer. I do really like this little box.
Easy to carry to somewhere else to check meters. Flea markets for example.

Yeah, exactly what I was thinking, and why I was a little  when I saw it was a disco product. 

mnem
With six you get egg roll.

[Specmaster]

Thats something that you don't see so much these days, taillight and headlight fluids, used to be all the rage years ago. 

[Mr. Scram]

370oC

I just did a quick test and the WD2M with a WP65 seems to take about 8-10 seconds to go from from room temperature to fully heated. That's good enough for the girls I go out with for sure, and a whole lot better than that Aoyue I had to contend with before. In hindsight, that thing was a mistake, despite plenty of people reporting good experiences with them.

I love that the small thermal mass means the iron cools down quickly too. Unfortunately it does have a bit of transformer buzz, so I'm contemplating revarnishing the transformer. I'm not sure how much that would help things, though.

[mnementh]

Thats something that you don't see so much these days, taillight and headlight fluids, used to be all the rage years ago. 

I understand on the RX-8 that if you drain the taillights, the horn stops working. Makes it a critical component here in Texas, where everybody use the horn instead of turn signals.


mnem
Oh sweet cheese and crackers.

[bd139]

Thats something that you don't see so much these days, taillight and headlight fluids, used to be all the rage years ago. 

My old Land Rover had “bulb coolant” thank you very much 

370oC

I just did a quick test and the WD2M with a WP65 seems to take about 8-10 seconds to go from from room temperature to fully heated. That's good enough for the girls I go out with for sure, and a whole lot better than that Aoyue I had to contend with before. In hindsight, that thing was a mistake, despite plenty of people report good experiences with them.

I love that the small thermal mass means the iron cools down quickly too.

That’s pretty quick. I’m starting to regret my TCP purchase. I bought it because I had a TCP from about 1991 to 2002 then sold everything and went on hiatus for a few years. Then I bought an Aoyue 937 so I understand your frustration there. The thermostat on that was a turd so it just got turned up and used as a fire stick. Then it broke and I found I needed a soldering iron to fix it. Fail. So I bought an antex xs25 because it was Sunday and I could bag one in maplin. Then I bought the TCP because my original one was pretty good.

Short spell in industry we used Pace and Weller irons.