Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Laphroaig is nice. A guy I worked for years ago popped a 40 year old bottle when we finished a big contract. Only afterwards did I find out it was about £200 a shot out of that 

[BU508A]

@Neomys Sapiens:
If you should want to test one of the most boring whiskys ever, then try this one:


But be careful! It could be that you'll fall asleep after the first sip! You've been warned. 

[Neomys Sapiens]

@BU508A: from here, I would look for the Belzer variant. They are sometimes to be had rather cheap on Ebay, as most people don't seem to understand what they are. They are 100% compatible with the blades from Ideal. Its the 3418 in this case.

[Neomys Sapiens]

@BU508A: Phoa, I started to yawn from looking at it. Where do I get some Port Ellen to counter that now?

[mnementh]

Well in good tool matters I take my leads from military standards, if I have not already developed my own ideas. And there the stripmaster respectively it's licensed copies (from Belzer, among others!) are the cat's meow. Whereas the bloody Weidmueller thing should be thrown in the shredder as fast as possible. I never understood how such an awful tool could find such widespread acceptance.
Look at the cut the Stripax performs. It does not sever more than half of the insulation and rips of the remainder. The stripmaster blades, if correctly selected, cut through at least 80% of the insulation and protect the conductor by the free space as opposed to the force-debendent mechanism only. The other alternative which I endorse is the classic german insulation stripper with 2 V-shaped grooves and a adjustment screw. But that adjustment screw must be used or the tool must be handled with really high sensitivity. Erems offer miniature versions of it which are nice to use, Bernstein had one earlier but they seem to have discontinued it. The basic (full size) type is especially useful as insulated versions are available, which allow to work on a live wire.
But a disadvantage of this latter type is that the cutting edges are a fixed part of the tool. So they can't be exchanged and sharpening them is not a trivial undertaking due to the geometry.
Another useful tool are the precision strippers, whose original version was from OK afaik.

These are the ones I ended up ordering from Amazon and should be with me tomorrow. I think that these are a clone of the ones you mention and have dedicated blades with cutouts for the cable size, the cable is gripped one side and the other cuts the insulation and then strips it off the end, or if making a tapping along the cable length, creates a gap where a splice can made.

   Those are available over here too, and they do have the wire stop attachment: https://www.amazon.ca/Capri-Tools-CP20010-Precision-Stripper/dp/B01018CVM0/

They don't appear to have any where near the quality of dies as the Ideal Stripmaster, which are precision ground both sides. But for US$23 with Prime next-day, sure are worth taking a punt on as long as 20ga min size is small enough. 

Let us know how rigid the jaws appear to be vs lateral deflection; the Ideal are machined/cast aluminum frame to keep the dies in perfect alignment. Not sure how well that works out with the stamped steel frame.

mnem
 

[BU508A]

Today my EPROM Eraser showed up which I've bought here (NAWTS).
I've ordered it in France, because I didn't want to wait for the nine-Euro-version from China.



And, of course, I took it apart first before turning it on (which was a good idea anyway).

Overview and a closer look to the electronics.


The wires attached to the UV-lamp did not convice me. I'll replace them and add some shrinking tubes.
But let's have first a look at the backside of this pcb.



Ugly soldering and a non-soldered joint. 

New PTFE-wires (the brown ones) and some aluminium foil taped at the lid of the case. Added also some black conducting foam at the bottom of the drawer.


I've tested it with some 27C1001 EPROMs and it is doing its job. That's all I wanted. But I'm convinced, it will for sure not meet the VDE safety standards or the CE standards (EMI).

Thanks for watching.

[BU508A]

@BU508A: Phoa, I started to yawn from looking at it. Where do I get some Port Ellen to counter that now?

I think, I'm having here somewhere a bottle of them. 

[mnementh]

@BU508A -

Looks like that unsoldered "connection" is just a anchor point on that choke coil in the ballast; but you knew that. Anything to save even a tenth of a second per unit.

Those plastic brackets for the bulb certainly look suspect; that one looks to be tightened down almost to the breaking point. 

Definitely don't wanna spend too much time looking at that thing; liable to put the fear of high potentials into ya. 

mnem
Yeah, especially while it's running. Cover that fukkin' thing with a blanket.    

[BU508A]

@BU508A: from here, I would look for the Belzer variant. They are sometimes to be had rather cheap on Ebay, as most people don't seem to understand what they are. They are 100% compatible with the blades from Ideal. Its the 3418 in this case.

With "Ideal" you are meaning the guys from Ideal-Tek in Switzerland?

Checked their website but I didn't find the blades for the Belzer wire stripper.
Currently, there are some Belzer wire strippers offered in the bay of evil. Some of them are used ones from the Bundewswehr but I'm a bit hesitating about them. The 3418-C is looking interesting.

[mnementh]

No; Ideal-Tek is the IP owner on the original SmarTweezer. The Ideal we're talking about is a US tool & supplies MFR; no idea where they're actually produced now of course:

https://www.idealind.com/

mnem
moo...?

[Neomys Sapiens]

@BU508A: from here, I would look for the Belzer variant. They are sometimes to be had rather cheap on Ebay, as most people don't seem to understand what they are. They are 100% compatible with the blades from Ideal. Its the 3418 in this case.

With "Ideal" you are meaning the guys from Ideal-Tek in Switzerland?

Checked their website but I didn't find the blades for the Belzer wire stripper.
Currently, there are some Belzer wire strippers offered in the bay of evil. Some of them are used ones from the Bundewswehr but I'm a bit hesitating about them. The 3418-C is looking interesting.

Nope. Those:
https://www.idealindustries.ca/en.html

[mnementh]

Huh... Ideal owns S-K and Buchanon... and recently bought out CREE: https://www.idealindustries.com/content/idealcorp/en/about/history.html#1916

mnem
 

[bd139]

My Ideal strippers were made in USA if that’s a confidence builder.

[Mr. Scram]

Oscilloscope fanboys. 

[Neomys Sapiens]

Oscilloscope fanboys. 

Does anyone understand this post? I'd rather have expected someone to lament about the dearth of y/t indicating instruments than that!

[Mr. Scram]

Does anyone understand this post? I'd rather have expected someone to lament about the dearth of y/t indicating instruments than that!

Apologies for the Vaguebooking. It's the threads where people ask for oscilloscope purchasing advice. A few usual suspects squat all of these and inundate them with skewed and coloured information advocating their favoured brand. Some have skin in the game and are shilling "their" products and others just seem oddly obsessed. This means the people most susceptible to it are drowned in noise and bias. It feels uncomfortably as if advantage is taken of people asking for help, especially considering more nuanced voices get drowned out or tire of the repeating circus and move on.

[med6753]

Does anyone understand this post? I'd rather have expected someone to lament about the dearth of y/t indicating instruments than that!

Apologies for the Vaguebooking. It's the threads where people ask for oscilloscope purchasing advice. A few usual suspects squat all of these and inundate them with skewed and coloured information advocating their favoured brand. Some have skin in the game and are shilling "their" products and others just seem oddly obsessed. This means the people most susceptible to it are drowned in noise and bias. It uncomfortably feels as if advantage is taken of people asking for help, especially considering more nuanced voices get drowned out or tire of the repeating circus and move on.

Yea, every few days another newb asks for advice as to what scope to buy and the usual suspects jump in and it quickly becomes a bitch-fest and a circle jerk. I never participate in those threads, waste of time. 

[Kosmic]

I decided to open up one of the 15Ghz amplifier I got recently. I'm a bit familiar with microstrip rf design but there is a lot of black magic going on on those ceramic boards.

[Kosmic]

Now a little bit closer with the Andonstar microscope.

For size reference, the ceramic boards are around 6.5mm wide

[Mr. Scram]

Yea, every few days another newb asks for advice as to what scope to buy and the usual suspects jump in and it quickly becomes a bitch-fest and a circle jerk. I never participate in those threads, waste of time.

That's the first thing many newcomers encounter, shit advice and bad attitudes. I don't think it's a good look for the forum and I don't think it's fair to the people asking for help. If these idiots just kept each other busy it'd be fine but people are spending real money on the FUD spouted in those threads. It's just a handful of regulars running amok so getting them in line or giving them the boot should be doable.

[Kosmic]

Hirez pictures can be found here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjGAejk8r_C1kal4yyA4VkCAooa7Mw?e=xGoDhc

[Cerebus]

Does anyone understand this post? I'd rather have expected someone to lament about the dearth of y/t indicating instruments than that!

Apologies for the Vaguebooking. It's the threads where people ask for oscilloscope purchasing advice. A few usual suspects squat all of these and inundate them with skewed and coloured information advocating their favoured brand. Some have skin in the game and are shilling "their" products and others just seem oddly obsessed. This means the people most susceptible to it are drowned in noise and bias. It feels uncomfortably as if advantage is taken of people asking for help, especially considering more nuanced voices get drowned out or tire of the repeating circus and move on.

A partial explanation may be that there's a tendency for some people to hold very rigid beliefs about "what is best" or "what is right" and will always proffer their opinions on the subjects that they hold themselves expert upon.

The motivation may very well be to genuinely help (as opposed to self aggrandisement or an attempt to bolster their self-belief), but by holding forth on their version of "the best" or "the right" with little regard to appropriateness of advice given, or an implicit refusal to ever reconsider their 'facts' as either mutable with time or as actually being opinion not fact. This seems particularly to affect people who once made a perfectly rational decision to, say, buy Tektronix rather than HP, to fit a particular need at the time, and they've forgotten the process of deliberation that went into that choice, and just remembered that they concluded "Tektronix is best".

I'm not naming names, but the metrology threads hold quite a few of these individuals and that's why you won't see me there very often any more even thought it's a subject area of deep interest to me. I've seen some plain wrong assertions made in there and experience has taught me that to question "the expert" or offer a better (or corrected) explanation tends to end badly. A couple of real experts on precision voltage references joined the forum and were offering very valuable insights gained from years of experience and were badgered so badly by the resident self appointed 'experts' that they basically said "Sod this for a game of soldiers" and ceased contributing. Of course some of this can also simply be attributed to Dunning–Kruger^* type effects.

^*I always want to correct that to "Krüger" and then remember that he's an American whose ancestors had to at some point give in, accept that no one was ever going to get the umlaut right and adopt a more 'English friendly' spelling.

[xrunner]

Hirez pictures can be found here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjGAejk8r_C1kal4yyA4VkCAooa7Mw?e=xGoDhc

Thanks for those. I'm not familiar with that kind of designing. What do the isolated pads function as? Are they some sort of RF load, or a capacitive-coupled path or ... ? 

[Kosmic]

Does anyone understand this post? I'd rather have expected someone to lament about the dearth of y/t indicating instruments than that!

Apologies for the Vaguebooking. It's the threads where people ask for oscilloscope purchasing advice. A few usual suspects squat all of these and inundate them with skewed and coloured information advocating their favoured brand. Some have skin in the game and are shilling "their" products and others just seem oddly obsessed. This means the people most susceptible to it are drowned in noise and bias. It uncomfortably feels as if advantage is taken of people asking for help, especially considering more nuanced voices get drowned out or tire of the repeating circus and move on.

Yea, every few days another newb asks for advice as to what scope to buy and the usual suspects jump in and it quickly becomes a bitch-fest and a circle jerk. I never participate in those threads, waste of time.

I participated once. Didn't really knew about those threads at the time. I had a useless exchange about peek detect mode and memory size. Never again.

[Kosmic]

Hirez pictures can be found here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjGAejk8r_C1kal4yyA4VkCAooa7Mw?e=xGoDhc

Thanks for those. I'm not familiar with that kind of designing. What do the isolated pads function as? Are they some sort of RF load, or a capacitive-coupled path or ... ? 

I'm wondering the same thing. I think they reuse the same boards and wire bound the pad they need base on the amplifier they are building. So if it's not wire bounded I would guess it's not really participating to the circuit.