Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

And I have a surprise. A TEA related activity involving leather!  That should grab the dragon's attention.  No additional clues, you'll just have to be patient. 

A Leather Dragon Tail Whip perhaps?   

I have these pre-sorted "capacitor packs" for instruments that are getting re-capped. All these are for Flukes. 8010A, 8050A, 7260A. I have a few more to build up but I have to submit another order.

And I have a surprise. A TEA related activity involving leather!  That should grab the dragon's attention.  No additional clues, you'll just have to be patient. 

 

No big one, it'll be a replacement handle thats all folks. 

[mansaxel]

I have a lot of the blue Park Tool in my garage.
Park Tool=Agilent/Keysight=TTi

Park Tool MK-297 Master Tool Kit By: Park Tool $7,795.95

 

I understand your comparison. That is a lot of money.

[Specmaster]

Here are the internal shots of this nice GW GOS-310 scope. It is as if it just left the factory inside there is not even a spec of dust, beautiful, What is so amazing is that I can only actually spot 1 IC in it, its all made from discrete parts so should be very repairable is later life should it need it to be repaired. Nice to see a linear power supply inside this puppy as well. All the PCB's are nicely and clearly labelled what the voltages and adjustment pots etc are, nice to see. Those 3 HV caps are the EHT caps for the CRT circuitry.  The single IC is to far away and is only 8 pin die, making reading the date code impossible without completely dismantling the scope to gain access to it.

[VK5RC]

Yup got some nice Park tool gear,  they keep coming up with new good stuff, Calvin is a -'legend' (for those who don't watch, he is Park tools youtube bike mechanic) - cue Monty Python bicycle repair man jokes!

[Mr. Scram]

Now I finally have a dedicated electronics bench and I'm setting things up but I'm finding I can't fit it all on the sodding desk. Not sure that's a win or a loss.

[bd139]

That's one reason I just ripped my entire corner and cupboard out and started again with a larger desk and a different objective of just getting stuff out I need at the time and buying stuff I need when I need it. There just wasn't enough space for it all on there however I organised it! 

Having night off TE. I fired up the K2 again after a month break and made a CW contact instantly with someone who wasn't a complete tit. And I'm hooked on that crack again

Also considering buying a KX2 as it's small and I'm going to be in and out of hotels for a bit and you can usually get an end fed out a window if you're sly about it 

[Brumby]

It'll never be big enough.

[bd139]

My grandfather suggested the same. I remember clearing his house after he dropped dead. The issue was not the workbench size, which was around 200 square feet
across three walls (!) but the amount of crap he'd collected and put on it 

[Cerebus]

It'll never be big enough.

Are you talking about benches or BD139's 'end' fed out of a hotel window?

[bd139]

Neither 

[Kosmic]

I spend almost half my time reorganizing my place. If I don't do that, the repair queue naturally invade the bench. and I have 3 of those now. I think I need to requisition a closet to put the repair queue.

[worsthorse]

That's one reason I just ripped my entire corner and cupboard out and started again with a larger desk and a different objective of just getting stuff out I need at the time and buying stuff I need when I need it. There just wasn't enough space for it all on there however I organised it! 

Having night off TE. I fired up the K2 again after a month break and made a CW contact instantly with someone who wasn't a complete tit. And I'm hooked on that crack again

Also considering buying a KX2 as it's small and I'm going to be in and out of hotels for a bit and you can usually get an end fed out a window if you're sly about it 

I have a KX1 for traveling, but these days, why not build something like the QCX for 20 meters instead?

[URI]

I have also reorganized my bench as I wrote some weeks ago (photos still to be made, not ready yet).
One positive effect is being able to pull out single instruments out the rack.

I used that for swapping the quartz in my HP 3456As that determine the integration time of the A/D conversion from the 60Hz-type to the 50Hz-type.
I ordered some custom made quartz built to HP specs some years ago and had them waiting for use since then -because swapping them in would have meant to tear down all the stack my HP 3456A were sitting in.   

Since the change in noise level with the right quartz (50Hz type) was noticeable I decided to do some statistics using the built in the 3456A statistics functions.
(I also tested my shorting plugs with this.)

I checked my two working units #1 and #2, each with 50Hz-synchronous integration time and once with 60Hz-synchronous integration time.
Auto-zero was ON and filter was OFF.
Here's the raw data:

	#1 / 50Hz	#1 / 60Hz	#2 / 50Hz	#2 / 60Hz
upper	-00.0000E⁻3V	+5.40000E-6V	+1100.000E-9V	+6.00000E-6V
lower	-4.00000E-6V	-7.40000E-6V	-2.40000E-6V	-6.00000E-6V
mean	-1586.778E-9V	-1634.096E-9V	-521.938E-9V	-602.368E-9V
variance	0.000049E-9V	0.004099E-9V	0.000036E-9V	0.002787E-9V
count	141.8320E3	147.3180E3	124.5800E3	157.3460E3

It's clearly visible that the "right" quartz for the A/D integration time being synchronous to the mains power (50Hz in my place: Germany) has a significant effect; it's roughly a factor 100 looking at the variance. 
I'm quite pleased about these results.      

I started the same test with my 3457A and it seems to be worse by roughly a decade (~147E-9V);
It's significantly noisier -but that's no surprise when taking it's front end construction into account..      

Conclusion: Do work with the HP 3456A only with the right integration time, use the right quartz for synchronizing the A/D-conversion integration time to the frequency of your mains power systems in your place. Otherwise you loose roughly two digits resolution to (unnecessary) noise.

Edit: Added conclusion

[mnementh]

   Just wanted to share with you all how much I *hate* the HP8563E.   Hate. HATE. HAAAAAAATEEE!!

Yep, you're right. But does that help you?         It got better with newer designs like the ESA-E/E440xb-series..   

Got one of those too. But luckily troublefree. Almost. Except for a chirp. Not opening it though, I'm not nuts.

But... but... how can you not just lurrrrrve all that gorgeous HF plumbing...?   

THIS is gorgeous RF plumbing:      The HP856x? Not so much.

I find hardline coax mildly pornographic. Loathe working on it; love looking at it.

And I have a surprise. A TEA related activity involving leather!  That should grab the dragon's attention.  No additional clues, you'll just have to be patient. 

A Leather Dragon Tail Whip perhaps?      

Perhaps... 

mnem
*toddles off for couch-tuber time widda boi*

[med6753]

I spend almost half my time reorganizing my place. If I don't do that, the repair queue naturally invade the bench. and I have 3 of those now. I think I need to requisition a closet to put the repair queue.

I have an entire closet dedicated to TE. Repair queue, parts mules, loose parts, books, documents, etc.

[angrybird]

Ahh, the test equipment thread.

duct taped man

leather whip


Ok I'm gonna go over somewhere else right now.... *slowly backs away*

[Cubdriver]

I spend almost half my time reorganizing my place. If I don't do that, the repair queue naturally invade the bench. and I have 3 of those now. I think I need to requisition a closet to put the repair queue.

I have an entire closet dedicated to TE. Repair queue, parts mules, loose parts, books, documents, etc.

In my case I have pretty much an entire house so dedicated...

-Pat

[Kosmic]

I spend almost half my time reorganizing my place. If I don't do that, the repair queue naturally invade the bench. and I have 3 of those now. I think I need to requisition a closet to put the repair queue.

I have an entire closet dedicated to TE. Repair queue, parts mules, loose parts, books, documents, etc.

In my case I have pretty much an entire house so dedicated...

-Pat

Yeah I remember seeing pictures. Looked like a fun place to be. You should do a party at some point 

[Kosmic]

So as every voltnut, I was looking for some good quality, low thermal EMF binding post. The only problem is that apparently Im a cheap bastard and I can't resolve myself to pay the 13$ apiece Pomona is asking for (Pomona 3770).

So I started by ordering varieties of cheap binding post from eBay and aliexpress, hopping that one of them would really be "Pure Copper" as advertised. Conclusion, there is some good quality brass binding post but they are not in copper and not low EMF.

One night, while I was endlessly looking for something to buy on eBay, I stumbled on some NOS binding post  advertised at 1$ apiece from a seller in Texas. They looked like the binding post ESI was using on their metrology instruments. So I decided to bite and ordered some.



After doing some tests (magnetism, weight, density, color of the metal and my clumsy attempt of measuring the Seebeck coefficient) I concluded they were, like the ESI binding post, in fact low thermal EMF gold plated tellurium copper.

No name NOS binging post on the left, ESI binding post on the right.


So really quickly I ordered everything the seller had to sell 

[beanflying]

You greedy bugga you didn't even try and share 

I need to stump up and buy some good ones for my Hamon Divider build. I do have some old Silver plated copper posts but it makes more sense to go to 4mm bananas. Going cheap is an option but it isn't doing the Resistors and Trimmers justice 

[Kosmic]

Apparently there is more where it came from. I'm trying to see if I can buy the whole lot 

In any case, if I get everything or some more pop on ebay, I'll let you know.

[Brumby]

Bean ... going bananas .... ... ...

Made me chuckle 

[med6753]

Have we become as obsessive as the audiophool trying to get his system's total harmonic distortion from an inaudible 0.02% to 0.01% ? Is this our ultimate fate? To be just like them?

"Low thermal EMF binding posts" to gain one more least significant digit confidence out of an 8.5 digit DMM. Are we just as nuts as they are? 

The lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. 

[mansaxel]

That's one reason I just ripped my entire corner and cupboard out and started again with a larger desk and a different objective of just getting stuff out I need at the time and buying stuff I need when I need it. There just wasn't enough space for it all on there however I organised it! 

Having night off TE. I fired up the K2 again after a month break and made a CW contact instantly with someone who wasn't a complete tit. And I'm hooked on that crack again

Also considering buying a KX2 as it's small and I'm going to be in and out of hotels for a bit and you can usually get an end fed out a window if you're sly about it 

Yeah, I'm considering bringing the FT817 with me if I go to NAB in Vegas in 7 weeks time. With the current situation on covid-19, we're on international travel ban, so not very hopeful.

[AVGresponding]

Ahh, the test equipment thread.

duct taped man

leather whip


Ok I'm gonna go over somewhere else right now.... *slowly backs away*

He's still an apprentice (in his final year admittedly), so he's a boy rather than a man, in industry parlance...

Hmm, now I think about it, that makes it sound worse...