Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

On the game front I can thoroughly recommend Besiege on Steam. Absolutely marvellous game for the engineer in us.

Have emerged from the middle of nowhere into humanity now. With regrets about my decision to return.

Never was a gamer, never will be.

After days of shut in from being under the weather I dared go out in public. As a human species we are doomed.

Old retirees like me who look like the cat dragged them in. Hair, if they have any, that looks like it mopped the kitchen floor. Sweat pants and slippers. Geez....at least make an effort to look decent when you go out in public. It ain't hard. 

Fat girls who wear pajama bottoms in public. It's so hard not to puke right in front of them. 

Being stuck on a register line at a store and the crazy behind you....whom you did NOT have eye contact nor acknowledge....want's to engage you in conversation and tell you his life story. And you can't get away from him. The temptation is there to tell them I don't give a flying fuck but there's the thought they may be off their meds and go ape shit on you. So you just shake your head until you can get away.

I'm home now. We are doomed.   

And there my friend you have described the very game that we all play, so you are a gamer after all, you play the game of life and you still give a shit, the others have understood that they are doomed and have given up playing 

[Kosmic]

(Just to add to what bean was saying)

If you are importing a STL in Fusion, normally the flow is:

1- Import the STL as a mesh
2- Edit the Mesh as needed (you can cut, fill, do bunch of modifications)
3- You can export as a stl if you have nothing else to do.
4- For more advance modifications, you convert the mesh to a body (Mesh to BRep)
5- Merge bunch of triangles to get uniform surfaces.
6- Modify the body with more advanced tools to get what you are looking for.

Example:

I got the stl for a probe holder



Now there is something written on the handle and I want to remove it.


I simply select the text by painting over it.


Use the remove/fill tool and completely delete the text.


Now I convert the mesh to a body (Mesh to BRep).


I use merge to get rid of some triangles.

Now it's trivial to split the body in multiple one.

I hope that model allows for adding a weight somewhere inside. I doubt the PLA will be heavy enough to put enough pressure on the probe point. The ones they give away at trade fairs (I got a bag load of these from Electronica) have metal weights in each leg and the entire piece is around 60g.

McBryce.

I think in one of the version you can fit a big nut to add some weight. I did not try them so not sure if they really work well. I was just playing with the .stl.

[mnementh]

On the game front I can thoroughly recommend Besiege on Steam. Absolutely marvellous game for the engineer in us.

Have emerged from the middle of nowhere into humanity now. With regrets about my decision to return.

Never was a gamer, never will be. After days of shut in from being under the weather I dared go out in public. As a human species we are doomed. Old retirees like me who look like the cat dragged them in. Hair, if they have any, that looks like it mopped the kitchen floor. Sweat pants and slippers. Geez....at least make an effort to look decent when you go out in public. It ain't hard.  Fat girls who wear pajama bottoms in public. It's so hard not to puke right in front of them. 

Being stuck on a register line at a store and the crazy behind you....whom you did NOT have eye contact nor acknowledge....want's to engage you in conversation and tell you his life story. And you can't get away from him. The temptation is there to tell them I don't give a flying fuck but there's the thought they may be off their meds and go ape shit on you. So you just shake your head until you can get away. I'm home now. We are doomed.   

And there my friend you have described the very game that we all play, so you are a gamer after all, you play the game of life and you still give a shit, the others have understood that they are doomed and have given up playing 

Yup. Even as fat as I am, I realize that sweats worn anywhere but in the privacy of one's own home (without visitors present) or while doing some appropriately sweaty work or play are by definition "give up on life pants". My wife and children have standing orders to call me on it and ridicule me loudly if I so much as set foot on the porch to pick up the paper while so undressed.

It's a line I will not cross. It's not much, but SOMETHING to cling to.

mnem
Pants as a species are highly overrated.

[bd139]

Yeah got to agree there. I don’t own any! I live in properly fitting cargo pants. If it’s hot, the same because I don’t want a tick on my balls 

Lots of locals here actually go to the local shops in their onesies, another cancerous creation. I mean who the fuck invented clothes you have to take the top off to curl one out. Fuuuu does my head in.

[Martin.M]

first results.  3456A



 

[med6753]

I've come to the conclusion that trying to get the 535A on it's side up on the kitchen counter is going to be too difficult, dangerous, and inconvenient. So I'm going to use bench 2 as shown here as an alternative. The 2465 on the right can stay where it is as well as the Siglent/Fluke DMM's on the left. Everything in between has got to be removed. That will make it much easier to lift the 535A off the cart and on it's side. And I'm sure I'll have to get underneath there anyway to trouble shoot because that's the location of the power supply.

The target to do this is tomorrow morning. If you hear a load crash call an ambulance.   

[mnementh]

From the "Depth-First Search Rabbit-Hole" files...



So this morning I was perusing a GoC surplus auction for new toys, when I stumbled across the above listed for sale.

Once I wiped the drool off my keyboard, I got to wondering  is the Government of Canada doing with this very expensive, very special-purpose sport/aerobatic aircraft (having flown a few scale models of the craft, I know from personal experience it is all about performance and not at ALL forgiving nor is it suitable for carrying more than a briefcase)...  it's NOT listed as a forfeiture auction, and the listing shows extensive maintenance history details. 

Furthermore, minimum bid is set at $295K, while stated net value is $189K. (Can someone with a little more knowledge of the business side of aircraft ownership shed some light on this large discrepancy? Is it a cost of asset/expenditure/depreciation vs market value thing?)

So I go hit up the Canada Civil Aircraft Registry... (Seriously... WTF happened to that once useful resource; now nothing more than a repository for a .csv file...? ) and I discover that it belongs to the Canada National Research Council - Flight Research Lab and they're literally just a few hundred miles away in the Ottowa Regional Airport: https://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Research-Council-Flight-Research-Lab/420551264812827



On their FB is this View from today's office window and all I can do is sigh... what a dream job.

mnem

[Martin.M]

this year I will make handles for Classic Tek, you will get a pair of them also.
I have only synthetic leather, but the color is pretty compatible. Inside is a metal , so they will do the job.

[bd139]

I am feeling sorry for this: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F274174694127

[mnementh]

Did it start life out as a gutted Heathkit, etc scope I just don't recognize, or is that a generic project enclosure from forever ago...?

Worst case scenario, good source of good knobs... or turn into a CRT clock. 

mnem

[med6753]

From the "Depth-First Search Rabbit-Hole" files...

(Attachment Link)

So this morning I was perusing a GoC surplus auction for new toys, when I stumbled across the above listed for sale.

Once I wiped the drool off my keyboard, I got to wondering  is the Government of Canada doing with this very expensive, very special-purpose sport/aerobatic aircraft (having flown a few scale models of the craft, I know from personal experience it is all about performance and not at ALL forgiving nor is it suitable for carrying more than a briefcase)...  it's NOT listed as a forfeiture auction, and the listing shows extensive maintenance history details. 

Furthermore, minimum bid is set at $295K, while stated net value is $189K. (Can someone with a little more knowledge of the business side of aircraft ownership shed some light on this large discrepancy? Is it a cost of asset/expenditure/depreciation vs market value thing?)

So I go hit up the Canada Civil Aircraft Registry... (Seriously... WTF happened to that once useful resource; now nothing more than a repository for a .csv file...? ) and I discover that it belongs to the Canada National Research Council - Flight Research Lab and they're literally just a few hundred miles away in the Ottowa Regional Airport: https://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Research-Council-Flight-Research-Lab/420551264812827



On their FB is this View from today's office window and all I can do is sigh... what a dream job.

mnem

Interesting. Other than that sport plane in the center is a De Havilland Twin Beaver, to the right a Lockheed T-33, left a Bell Huey, in front of that a Bell Jet Ranger. Not sure what that corporate jet is in front of the twin beaver and it appears to be a T-6 Texan in front of that.

[McBryce]

On the game front I can thoroughly recommend Besiege on Steam. Absolutely marvellous game for the engineer in us.

Have emerged from the middle of nowhere into humanity now. With regrets about my decision to return.

Never was a gamer, never will be.

After days of shut in from being under the weather I dared go out in public. As a human species we are doomed.

Old retirees like me who look like the cat dragged them in. Hair, if they have any, that looks like it mopped the kitchen floor. Sweat pants and slippers. Geez....at least make an effort to look decent when you go out in public. It ain't hard. 

Fat girls who wear pajama bottoms in public. It's so hard not to puke right in front of them. 

Being stuck on a register line at a store and the crazy behind you....whom you did NOT have eye contact nor acknowledge....want's to engage you in conversation and tell you his life story. And you can't get away from him. The temptation is there to tell them I don't give a flying fuck but there's the thought they may be off their meds and go ape shit on you. So you just shake your head until you can get away.

I'm home now. We are doomed. 

Remind me never to move to wherever you live. That sounds like torture!

McBryce.

[mnementh]

Interesting. Other than that sport plane in the center is a De Havilland Twin Beaver, to the right a Lockheed T-33, left a Bell Huey, in front of that a Bell Jet Ranger. Not sure what that corporate jet is in front of the twin beaver and it appears to be a T-6 Texan in front of that.

It appears they were using the commuter jet (online registries shows its call C-FIGO as a Raytheon Hawker 800 and as a Sikorsky S-76D both owned by Fig Air out of Vegas ) as part of some reduced gravity experimentation by SEDS Canada. https://www.facebook.com/sedscanada/

mnem
*trying to overcome intertia to go do something useful*

[bd139]

Did it start life out as a gutted Heathkit, etc scope I just don't recognize, or is that a generic project enclosure from forever ago...?

Worst case scenario, good source of good knobs... or turn into a CRT clock. 

Think it's built from scratch. Might be fun to reverse engineer.

Just tripped over this bench picture. Lots of goodness going on there!



Source: http://www.kurankoncepts.com/home-brew-custom-tube-tester.html

Yes the whole thing is a tube tester by the looks.

Edit: I think the most appropriate word for it is "skookum"

Edit 2: also make your own original HP oscillator!!! http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/earlyinstruments/0002/0002sixviews.html 

[mnementh]

It's failing self test though. Not sure what "Trigger light" is and if it's fixable.      Bid accordingly 

There's an LED beside the channel input that lights when the input is triggered. I've seen one with that error before and recall that I couldn't find much info on what impact, aside from the LED being stuck off or on, the error has. I assume the fix would be a transistor or driver chip. Of course, the manual says to replace the whole board. I missed one last year that sold for $10. I even asked the vendor if they happened to have another. Sometimes it's better to buy first and think later.

Woo, they really went all out with the self tests. Testing a led 

My guess would be that they're using the state of that LED in response to self-generated test signals as part of the POST to confirm proper operation of some of the trigger circuitry. So difficulty of the repair could vary greatly dependent on the complexity of the circuitry that both the LED and the specific Power On Self Test causing the error are dependent upon. 

mnem

[bd139]

More HP goodness. This guy out-HP's all of us 

http://www.kennethkuhn.com/hpmuseum/hp_tour.htm

[Martin.M]

3 Heathkits, that`s very nice.
6L6 want to work there, not to be killed in a guitar amplifier..

[bd139]

Yeah we have perfectly good transistors for guitar amplifiers now

(internet flamewar starter for ten)

[mnementh]

I've seen his site before; I recognize the homepage: http://www.kennethkuhn.com/hpmuseum/index.htm

A lot of the links are dead, unfortunately. The whole place feels like the default template from the TriPod site generator; now there's a blast from the past...    The lack of updates suggests he may have gone silent key... or at least "can't be arsed to... key" in the 5 years or so since his last update... 

mnem
*whole-arsed*

[med6753]

The lack of updates suggests he may have gone silent key... or at least "can't be arsed to... key" in the 5 years or so since his last update... 

mnem
*whole-arsed*

A shelf fell on him. 

[bd139]

LMAO 

Or he swapped his HP kit for floozies 

[med6753]

Depending how he auctioned it that would definitely buy a bunch of hookers and blow. 

[Specmaster]

I've come to the conclusion that trying to get the 535A on it's side up on the kitchen counter is going to be too difficult, dangerous, and inconvenient. So I'm going to use bench 2 as shown here as an alternative. The 2465 on the right can stay where it is as well as the Siglent/Fluke DMM's on the left. Everything in between has got to be removed. That will make it much easier to lift the 535A off the cart and on it's side. And I'm sure I'll have to get underneath there anyway to trouble shoot because that's the location of the power supply.

The target to do this is tomorrow morning. If you hear a load crash call an ambulance.   

Best get your £2,500 seeing as we were all told that is what it costs to call an ambulance, state side

[mnementh]

A shelf fell on him. 

   You bastard. That is SO wrong... yet so possible. 

How many times I've imagined poor neo suffering exactly that fate trying to get his latest "treasure" up onto the bench... just like med is fixin' ta do.

mnem
But hey... the summitch always has toasty feet in the winter. 

[med6753]

I've come to the conclusion that trying to get the 535A on it's side up on the kitchen counter is going to be too difficult, dangerous, and inconvenient. So I'm going to use bench 2 as shown here as an alternative. The 2465 on the right can stay where it is as well as the Siglent/Fluke DMM's on the left. Everything in between has got to be removed. That will make it much easier to lift the 535A off the cart and on it's side. And I'm sure I'll have to get underneath there anyway to trouble shoot because that's the location of the power supply.

The target to do this is tomorrow morning. If you hear a load crash call an ambulance.   

Best get your £2,500 seeing as we were all told that is what it costs to call an ambulance, state side

I'm an old fart....I have Medicare...no worries.