Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

If I were buying new, I'd probably let tautech sell me something. 

This. Completely this. I'd buy a 4 channel horse next time though 

I thought he pimped sold sheep?

[mnementh]

Random Mode:



I saw this and immediately thought of med and bd going off on Land Rovers. 

mnem
no idea why.

[Cerebus]

And for those who think my color choice for the bedroom is too "girly" check it out. Far from it. Think "out of box" when it comes to color. 

Indeed, "girly" was wrong. "Boudoir of a lady of negotiable affection" it is.

[mnementh]

Today my EPROM Eraser showed up which I've bought

<snip>

But I'm convinced, it will for sure not meet the VDE safety standards or the CE standards (EMI).

After or before you've enhanced it? 

Seriously, the major problem with self-certification along the CE marking model is that it lacks "nuke'm from orbit, land, plow the land and spread salt over the fields" termination clauses in the legislation. It is largely painless and cheap to get caught peddling broken stuff, so people take their chances, especially if they're only one step in the value chain. There is always someone else to blame.

The old SEMKO / DEMKO / VDE / UL / CSA model was hampering innovation and was a market blocker; we do not want that again. What we need is a way for manufacturers and vendors to feel the pain.

Oh, I know... it was so horrible to have to have your product full of angry pixies inspected by an independent certification body made of people who actually know their asses from a hole in the ground. You know, BEFORE importing them by containerload and the fire jumps out and burns people up. 

mnem
"Acceptable risks" = pricetag on human lives.

I get your point, but there's a horrible tendency for these organizations to turn into "rent seeking" operations. The big boys don't particularly care, they can absorb all the fees (and second people to all the standards committees and inspection organization's boards), and the £20,000 in fees for the simplest product to reach the market nicely keeps them from being competed with by all those pesky little independent operations without getting into any trouble over anticompetitive practices. Ask the Germans about the TUV, and frankly the TUV is one of the better at still performing its original intended purpose. They start out as a good idea with good intentions but quickly become a barrier to market entry for any but the biggest organizations.

Back in the day, I was a member of the UK naming committee, which did a pretty good job of managing UK domain registrations (in particular, ensuring that registrations actually fitted the nominal category they were for and weren't abusive) for no fees at all. Now go and look at the horrendous mess that (the nominally non-profit, hah!) Nominet has made of everything - minting money hand over fist in the process. It's not quite the same thing as TUV/whatever, but it does fit in the same niche in regulatory/civil society and failed in exactly the way those fail.

The only reason these regulatory agency models fail is because we've pretty much legalized bribery of the politicians who ultimately control the process. This all falls under the whole "Who watches the watchers...?" conundrum; in the real world this only serves as a fundamentally fallacious, nearly tautology argument for deregulation.

As long as those who profit from breaking the system are allowed to influence the system without penalty, the system will grow increasingly broken. At some point we have to admit this whole deregulation thing was a failed experiment, roll up our sleeves and start cleaning up the mess.

What we're doing now is making excuses for the mess; even to the point of refusing to acknowledge the rotting pile of institutionalized corruption in the corner of the room as it towers over our heads, teetering on engulfing the entire human race.

mnem

[BU508A]

Working on the Type 3A6 plug-in and found more physical damage. Look at that coil just above the pair of 6.8K/2W resistors. Yep, snapped in half. Compare to coil above it. Luckily the coil does not have a slug core and surprisingly the fine wiring is in tact. I confirmed same resistance readings with other coil. Going to leave it for now. Too much of a risk of breaking those fine wires. And it's not the issue anyway. I'm tracing it further back.

[img=100]https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/xq90/923/XVkN50.jpg[/img]

And for those who think my color choice for the bedroom is too "girly" check it out. Far from it. Think "out of box" when it comes to color. 

  

[Specmaster]

Edit: changed avatar. The Ferengi was making me uncomfortable 

[Fx: wanders into distance singing ] "I wear my heart on my sleeve, I wear my heart on my sleeve..."

FIFY

[Specmaster]

Hahaha. I used to get paid as a contractor in that manor by a rather hooky dude. Someone would cruise up to me in the middle of Leyton and handle a wad of cash out of a BMW with blacked out windows.

Sounds like a dodgy drug dealer to me 

[Specmaster]

Edit: changed avatar. The Ferengi was making me uncomfortable 

Pity, I liked the "no equal sign" picture 

What's the meaning of the new one? Looks like a draft from a marketing company selling Batterizers. 

He changes avatars more often than I change underwear. 

*backs slowly away from Stinky Smurf*     

mnem
Agitate more, whinge less. 

Papa Smurf backs away rapidly from stinky Dwagon and stands upwind from him 

[Cerebus]

The only reason these regulatory agency models fail is because we've pretty much legalized bribery of the politicians who ultimately control the process.

Nope. Having sat on no less than 3 national level committees of this ilk I can say with some reasonable insight that this is not how this starts to go downhill. Often the people involved are well meaning and there's no money in it for them personally. What they usually lack is some miserable old bastard like me who's seen it all before and can warn them of the pitfalls in the future if they don't make allowances for them now. The failings are not born out of corruption, but inexperience, short-sightedness, a lack of having learned enough history of these things to avoid repeating them, unintended consequences and, inevitably at some point, thinking that having one of the "great and the good" on the committee would be a good thing.

Corruption, should it have a hand in things, comes along years later. I'm happy to stipulate, if you wish, that corruption is there ab initio in North America, but experience suggests the failings are more by lack of competence than by being driven by greed in the first instance.

[Saskia]

Edit: changed avatar. The Ferengi was making me uncomfortable 

Pity, I liked the "no equal sign" picture 

What's the meaning of the new one? Looks like a draft from a marketing company selling Batterizers. 

He changes avatars more often than I change underwear. 

*backs slowly away from Stinky Smurf*     

mnem
Agitate more, whinge less. 

Papa Smurf backs away rapidly from stinky Dwagon and stands upwind from him 

 

Let's go.

[Specmaster]

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
 

The strippers arrived today and I must say that I'm very impressed with them indeed, and they are just the same as your photo, they came with the stripping gauge and the allen key (hex wench for you Mericans). Only downside so far is that the cutting blades stop at 20AWG, I could really do with the 14-26AWG set https://capritools.com/shop/wire-stripping-blades-precision/

Problem being that they don't ship to the UK and nobody in the UK stocks them  I'll have to check into the Ideal Stripmaster blades to see if they are available in the UK because, wait for it, they are the identical blades. 

[BU508A]

The only reason these regulatory agency models fail is because we've pretty much legalized bribery of the politicians who ultimately control the process.

Nope. Having sat on no less than 3 national level committees of this ilk I can say with some reasonable insight that this is not how this starts to go downhill. Often the people involved are well meaning and there's no money in it for them personally. What they usually lack is some miserable old bastard like me who's seen it all before and can warn them of the pitfalls in the future if they don't make allowances for them now. The failings are not born out of corruption, but inexperience, short-sightedness, a lack of having learned enough history of these things to avoid repeating them, unintended consequences and, inevitably at some point, thinking that having one of the "great and the good" on the committee would be a good thing.

Corruption, should it have a hand in things, comes along years later. I'm happy to stipulate, if you wish, that corruption is there ab initio in North America, but experience suggests the failings are more by lack of competence than by being driven by greed in the first instance.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

or, similar sense:

"If you want to build a good thief protection system, you need a good thief."

[nixiefreqq]

something seemed familiar about meds paint scheme.


https://www.odditycentral.com/news/painting-jail-cells-pink-a-controversial-way-to-curb-inmate-aggression.html


oh yeah.  thats it.

[Saskia]

Med is not living in 'zona

[Specmaster]

Switch in the 7150 is now replaced (thanks bd139 for the link) and as it turned out I didn't need to strip the wires at all (apart from 2) as they all unsoldered nicely from the old switch, and I was able to get them threaded through the contact holes on new switch and resolder and even reuse the original rubber booties on the terminals. Thats one 7150 now using shrouded input sockets, will do the other one shortly.

I would like to do the HP3466A but I doubt that can be done because one of the sockets is also the fuse holder for the current ranges 

[Specmaster]

something seemed familiar about meds paint scheme.


https://www.odditycentral.com/news/painting-jail-cells-pink-a-controversial-way-to-curb-inmate-aggression.html


oh yeah.  thats it.

The thing is that poor Med claims it is a shade of red, nice to know that I'm not alone in thinking it's more pink than red. That said though there could be another reason for the colour choice that might become known in due course 

[mnementh]

And if there is...?

mnem
 

[Saskia]

I would not give 2 shits of a fuck because it would be his private and personal business and thus of no concern whatsoever to us.

[mnementh]

My point exactly. 

mnem
 

[bd139]

Well i like the paint job. Makes a change from blue 

[mnementh]

The only reason these regulatory agency models fail is because we've pretty much legalized bribery of the politicians who ultimately control the process.

Nope. Having sat on no less than 3 national level committees of this ilk I can say with some reasonable insight that this is not how this starts to go downhill. Often the people involved are well meaning and there's no money in it for them personally. What they usually lack is some miserable old bastard like me who's seen it all before and can warn them of the pitfalls in the future if they don't make allowances for them now. The failings are not born out of corruption, but inexperience, short-sightedness, a lack of having learned enough history of these things to avoid repeating them, unintended consequences and, inevitably at some point, thinking that having one of the "great and the good" on the committee would be a good thing.

Corruption, should it have a hand in things, comes along years later. I'm happy to stipulate, if you wish, that corruption is there ab initio in North America, but experience suggests the failings are more by lack of competence than by being driven by greed in the first instance.

Yes, that kind of incompetence is the chink which the corrupt always seek out and leverage in their pursuit of greater personal gain. It's not like this is a new scenario; America faced exactly this kind of institutionalized corruption a century ago.  The lessons hard-learned there are coming around again.

I liken this flavor of corruption to the difference between soy sauce and Teriyaki. Soy sauce (like the usual everyday sort of small-time corruption we've been accustomed to for centuries) is a wine-like product distilled from a plant not usually used for winemaking. American-style corruption is a whole 'nuther level; like they took the existing corruption and distilled it to its purest essence.

Just as Teriyaki is distilled from soy sauce, it is an acquired taste with many (arguably a majority) who find it disgusting. Like American-style corruption.

mnem
*all done    for today*

[Saskia]

you have the same over here. Why could VW survive this long with the exhaust defeat device fraud ? Becauce politicians are hanging on their trough.

[25 CPS]

So I went down to the basement looking for something and the good news is I found a set of regular banana plug kelvin leads.  I was going to order a set of those next week because I didn’t have any and wanted one for my 3457A and 3478As.  I have a set of shrouded banana plug kelvin leads I use with my 34401A but I try to keep as much use as I can off that meter to prolong the life of the VFD display so this is great.

The bad news is I didn’t find the something else.

[Specmaster]

My point exactly. 

mnem
 

Geez, pink is apparently well known as nixiefreqq's post points out, has a calming effect, remember the signature Med uses  Just saying thats all. I have no idea where your minds were going with this 

[bd139]

Did a 100% full check out of all 3478A and 8060A calibration and they're bang on all ranges. Either that or both drifted away from reality just as far. Very happy.

I will say that the 8060A has a better low mA range than the 3478A. But the 3478A has a hell of a lot more AC bandwidth. Very different but complimentary meters. A good pair.