Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

That 270 looks promising, a lot nicer than my 635 when it came through. I have done a basic cleanup on it; looks a lot nicer than this now but I still totes need to get after those jacks with a .22 cal brass brush and some silicone spray. Can't complain; got mine for CAD$13.55. If all I do is leave it perched it on the mantle, I've gotten my money's worth out of it.

mnem
 

Thanks.  I haven't done anything to these meters at all other than hook them up and do some low voltage DC tests on them.  They'd all benefit from a cleaning at minimum, for sure.  Your 635 looks like it cleaned up nicely though.  I have a 635 as well and the only thing I did was scrape out the 35 year old batteries and the crusty crud from where they leaked all over.  Unfortunately, one of the AA battery contacts broke and went sailing into the garbage can along with the leaked battery it was attached to.  I don't think it could've been saved though.  The batteries were really far gone.  I should've taken pictures of the inside of the 635 but instinct kicked in and I got the batteries out of there as fast as I could to prevent any more damage from happening but that ship had probably sailed at least a decade ago so there wasn't any need to rush on my part.  Have you tried out your 635 at all though, even a couple of DC volt checks just to make sure the movement's still working?

Yeah, the battery contacts are a perennial problem; fortunately Keystone makes one others have said works as a replacement, and DigiKey carries it for 81¢ each: https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/keystone-electronics/5209/299941

The J-clips are a bit of a bastard; I was "going to look through their stuff someday" for a similar enough clip I thought could be manhandled into a replacement.

DigiKey's Battery Holders Clips & Contacts Dept is full of interesting stuffs, BTW... a great place to look when you need to pad an order for free shipping: https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/filter/battery-holders-clips-contacts/86

Yes, I've tested mine; voltage does cause deflection and the movement is smooth and no binding, however a couple of the current shunts are extra crispy hand-wound-on-phenolic-formers type and I haven't tackled them yet, nor have I found anything I think might be a reasonable ceramic substitute.

I may bug you to take some readings on yours somewhere over the winter when I'm stuck inside with nothing to do however. I have yet to find a schematic on the 635; instead of the usual multiples-of-5 scale, it has a oddball scale in multiples-of-3, which I guess was due to some variation in the demands of local electrical code.

Good hunting!

HOLY SHEEIT!!! I actually found the post where I read about IMS ( www.multimeter.com ); they have an assortment of Simpson parts, including OEM-style copper-colored phosphor-bronze battery clip sets: https://www.metersales.com/shop/category/parts-for-test-equpment-138

mnem
 

[factory]

I'm not sure I'd trust 3D printed parts for HV. ABS is a sponge and PLA is full of air pockets. What the breakdown voltage? Creepage distance etc? No idea, then I wouldn't put it between me and a kV source. The original parts look like they are Nylon.

McBryce.

WTFE.     If you're handling that bit while its live, you DESERVE what you get. 

EDIT: The Probulator end... yeah, I agree. I wouldn't print that; except maybe a hand-grip to go around a nylon, FR4 or glass tube which would be the actual probe.

EDIT-EDIT: Dang... woudja lookit that scary-ass HV cable with just a alligator on the end...? That's like... TURBO Suicide Cord; for when the usual AC Line Suicide cord isn't fast enough...  

mnem
 

And what's wrong with having the alligator clip?

Most flash testers at work have alligator clips, but then again they are in dedicated test pens, where you connect up the device under test with the power off and only have access to the control panel once outside the test pen, gate interlocks and key-switches are also used.
You also verify the flash tester is working properly before & after use, a discharge wand can also be found in most test pens.

I suspect the the leads for the AC Megger at work are discontinued because they aren't the shrouded type, all the new Megger models seem to use shrouded HV banana plugs on the test leads.

David

[tonyalbus]

My Electronic Load is now 3 days old, lets drill holes in it :-)



Warranty 

i allready opened it the day i took it out of its box...

[tautech]

4: For a more "bespoke" look, you can use binding post screws/Chicago screws/sex bolts, available in brass, stainless and aluminum from Amazon or your local homeowner hell in a variety of lengths and they're cheap:



mnem
 

Oh yeah them things are neat ^^^.
At one time they were used exclusively on leather rifle slings and sure lasted longer than the leather. 
Now it's all synthetic slings with plastic buckles......yet they do work providing they're a Uncle Mikes brand and not some POS knockoff.

[BU508A]

My Electronic Load is now 3 days old, lets drill holes in it :-)

https://youtu.be/UeVNQ4argDU

Warranty 

i allready opened it the day i took it out of its box...

Tony is having fun.      

[mnementh]

Yeah; lock up the wimmin' & hide the fried chicken; Tony's havin' fun. 


@factory - Not anything WRONG with it, provided it's kept safely in its natural habitat on the other side of a insulated hood.

Just sitting on the bench there, tho it's so innocuous-looking unless you KNOW what's on the end of it; THEN it's scary AF.  Like looking down and finding a viper right where you were about to reach, or a tiger lurking in the undergrowth at the back wall on your bench...


@tautech - Yeah, sex bolts are... sexy.    What's amazing actually is that they're still generally so readily available.

mnem
*busy working on weedeater stuffs*

[tggzzz]

Oops, I did it again. Bought yet another scope, that is.

I was sure that someone would outbid me, since the suggested range was "£100-150", and I didn't bid the maximum. I think the second example went for more than I paid.

Now they are nice little things, used by university students, and are on back allocation until November at the earliest, so I can probably flip it at a profit. But should I simply flip my earlier variant, and keep the "boxed as new" item for myself.

Decisions, decisions.

[bd139]

Interesting. What did you land?

I have been researching somewhat ancient (60s) construction techniques for VHF circuits. I have decided to move my telemetry project over to APRS on 2m thus saving all sorts of horrid antenna shenanigans. Managed to transmit with an Si5351A, one MAV-11 stage and a 2n3866 PA kicking out 250mW so far which is fairly acceptable.

[tautech]

Oops, I did it again. Bought yet another scope, that is.

Only one ? 

[Neomys Sapiens]

I have not encountered this term before, which I find suspicious. EMC/EMI is a topic I really strive to keep current in.
Citation:
'The TV was found to be emitting a single high-level impulse noise (SHINE), which causes electrical interference in other devices.'

The remainder is here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-54239180

As far as other news are concerned, I am feeling quite sick  Seems I have lost in the preservability fight yesterday. WTF, it did not taste as bad as it feels!

[25 CPS]

Yeah, the battery contacts are a perennial problem; fortunately Keystone makes one others have said works as a replacement, and DigiKey carries it for 81¢ each: https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/keystone-electronics/5209/299941

The J-clips are a bit of a bastard; I was "going to look through their stuff someday" for a similar enough clip I thought could be manhandled into a replacement.

DigiKey's Battery Holders Clips & Contacts Dept is full of interesting stuffs, BTW... a great place to look when you need to pad an order for free shipping: https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/filter/battery-holders-clips-contacts/86

Yes, I've tested mine; voltage does cause deflection and the movement is smooth and no binding, however a couple of the current shunts are extra crispy hand-wound-on-phenolic-formers type and I haven't tackled them yet, nor have I found anything I think might be a reasonable ceramic substitute.

I may bug you to take some readings on yours somewhere over the winter when I'm stuck inside with nothing to do however. I have yet to find a schematic on the 635; instead of the usual multiples-of-5 scale, it has a oddball scale in multiples-of-3, which I guess was due to some variation in the demands of local electrical code.

Good hunting!

HOLY SHEEIT!!! I actually found the post where I read about IMS ( www.multimeter.com ); they have an assortment of Simpson parts, including OEM-style copper-colored phosphor-bronze battery clip sets: https://www.metersales.com/shop/category/parts-for-test-equpment-138

mnem
 

Very interesting on the OEM battery clips.  My original plan was to get a small piece of similar type metal from a hobby shop or something like that and try to craft the right shape with tin snips and then fold and drill as necessary so a drop in replacement is a heck of a lot easier for sure.

The 635 is an interesting piece of kit.  Most of the ones I've seen pictures of are army surplus 635HV versions with the high voltage divider back.  I know I've seen schematics for the high voltage back but I can't find them again right now.

The scales based on multiples of three threw me off at first and I thought maybe that was a government requirement since the vast majority of 635s I've seen pictures of out there are army surplus units as is the one I have.  Of the pictures I've seen of these online of various 635s, I've never seen one where the Canadian Armed Services inventory plate's been stamped for navy or air force, they're all army, and I've only seen the occasional non-government surplus 635HV and only once seen a regular non-government, non-HV civilian 635 without the voltage range expander option.

However, looking around a bit more and adding the Triplett plus the Northern Electric meter that Bach-Simpson made, it looks like the AT&T Bell System standardized on the multiples of three scales and got carried over by Northern Electric up here, and the Triplett 630 which so far looks like a regular multimeter without any corporate or government affiliation or customization is also ranged in multiples of three so it looks like it's more common than I thought at first.  One thought that did come to mind is that it does accommodate 6, 12 and 120V electrical systems easily but telephone's -48V so that doesn't explain the phone companies going for that sort of ranging unless it's to have nominal voltage land 4/5 up the 60 V scale in their case.  I haven't posted the pictures because of the image SNAFU but when I tested out those two meters, I did 6 and 12 volts to get half scale and full scale deflection respectively instead of the 5 and 10 V that I did for the AVO and the 270.

Let me know if you do need any measurements from my 635.  I haven't comprehensively tested it yet, just used it for some voltage measurements which it's been great for, so hopefully the battery leakage damage is limited to the one clip that got destroyed and hopefully none of the shunts or precision resistors got damaged.  I did a cursory lookover after I finished scraping what was left of the government issue Canadian Forces batteries that were still in it into the garbage but I haven't done a comprehensive all functions, all ranges test yet even though I've been using it as a voltmeter for some things with no problem.

[Kosmic]

My Electronic Load is now 3 days old, lets drill holes in it :-)



Warranty 

i allready opened it the day i took it out of its box...

Good job with the mod. Look really good 

[Brumby]

Sorry - but I have to tell you about my latest laugh...

Got a call on the landline from somebody with an accent that likely hailed from the subcontinent claiming to be from the technical department of Telstra, calling about my internet service.

Fascinating - since none of the internet services I have anything to do with are with Telstra...

My response - in a rather excited voice - was: "A scammer!  It's been ages since I've had a scammer!"  Just as the last syllable left my mouth, I heard "Beep - beep - beep - beep" signifying they had hung up.


I'm still smiling.

[tautech]

Sorry - but I have to tell you about my latest laugh...

Got a call on the landline from somebody with an accent that likely hailed from the subcontinent claiming to be from the technical department of Telstra, calling about my internet service.

Fascinating - since none of the internet services I have anything to do with are with Telstra...

My response - in a rather excited voice - was: "A scammer!  It's been ages since I've had a scammer!"  Just as the last syllable left my mouth, I heard "Beep - beep - beep - beep" signifying they had hung up.


I'm still smiling.

We get similar regularly and we haven't even got a phone line connection, VOIP over P-P 5 GHz wireless instead. 
Normally we just hang up part way through their rabble. 

[bd139]

I have not encountered this term before, which I find suspicious. EMC/EMI is a topic I really strive to keep current in.
Citation:
'The TV was found to be emitting a single high-level impulse noise (SHINE), which causes electrical interference in other devices.'

The remainder is here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-54239180

As far as other news are concerned, I am feeling quite sick  Seems I have lost in the preservability fight yesterday. WTF, it did not taste as bad as it feels!

If it's related to openreach it says their PR team or road monkeys made up the term on the spot.

It took 18 months to fix. That's about right for them 

[tggzzz]

Interesting. What did you land?

I have been researching somewhat ancient (60s) construction techniques for VHF circuits. I have decided to move my telemetry project over to APRS on 2m thus saving all sorts of horrid antenna shenanigans. Managed to transmit with an Si5351A, one MAV-11 stage and a 2n3866 PA kicking out 250mW so far which is fairly acceptable.

I should have mentioned: a Digilent AD2. I have an AD1 and like it for what it is. The AWG, pattern generator and primitive logic analyser are occasionally useful.

As for nasty construction techniques, never forget cordwood

Oops, I did it again. Bought yet another scope, that is.

Only one ? 

Given that I am overloaded, one is too many. But it is small and can be flipped.

[tautech]

Oops, I did it again. Bought yet another scope, that is.

Only one ? 

Given that I am overloaded, one is too many. But it is small and can be flipped.

Overloaded with scopes, nah 
Wondering if the dozen I bought yesterday is even enough. 

[tonyalbus]

Oops, I did it again. Bought yet another scope, that is.

Only one ? 

Given that I am overloaded, one is too many. But it is small and can be flipped.

Overloaded with scopes, nah 
Wondering if the dozen I bought yesterday is even enough. 

In this group one can never have too much TE 

[tautech]

Oops, I did it again. Bought yet another scope, that is.

Only one ? 

Given that I am overloaded, one is too many. But it is small and can be flipped.

Overloaded with scopes, nah 
Wondering if the dozen I bought yesterday is even enough. 

In this group one can never have too much TE 

The real worry is how long I can keep bringing home new orders with my current SUV before I need get a bigger one ! 
Best effort so far is 26 DSO's and a bit of other stuff all in one load. 
No room for passengers ! 

[Specmaster]

I took a day away from my bench yesterday and went to RAF Lakenheath for spot of photography of some local F15's and visiting F16's from Aviano AB, Italy who were here on exercise. I missed the daytime photo shoot thanks to the local Police who moved me on from I had parked at the roadside, leaving my son at the fence of the airfield, on his ladder getting some photos. I had to drive to the other side of the airfield to the public viewing bay which meant that all the planes were brilliantly backlit, so no photos taken by me then. Later on in the evening, when we thought the base was shut down for the night, we noticed a load of other aviation enthusiasts arriving with ladders and cameras walking past us and going further along the airfield security fence so, curious, we followed. A few minutes later we heard loads of Jet engines being fired up and were eventually rewarded with 8 F16's that were doing some night flying, fully loaded practise bombs and missiles etc. So I ended up getting some nice shots of F16's taking off with full after burners on. These were shot through the chain link fence so are not perfect, but I include a couple here for those interested members.

As we drove home, we called in at the local McDonalds drive through and on our departure from there, were followed a car with what appeared no lights at all, subsequently turned to have headlights but no rear lights. I took this car to be from one of the 2 USAF airbases, Mildenhall or Lakenheath, 3 miles away as it was Left-hand drive on UK plates. I tried to warn the driver as you can see in the video (link) but to no avail, I hope that nothing bad happened to them as they went on a fast dual carriageway like that in pitch black 

[bd139]

Send that video to the most disrespectful cretin papers. They'll be all over it after that woman killed someone pulling out of a base.

[Cerebus]

I have not encountered this term before, which I find suspicious. EMC/EMI is a topic I really strive to keep current in.
Citation:
'The TV was found to be emitting a single high-level impulse noise (SHINE), which causes electrical interference in other devices.'

The remainder is here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-54239180

As far as other news are concerned, I am feeling quite sick  Seems I have lost in the preservability fight yesterday. WTF, it did not taste as bad as it feels!

If it's related to openreach it says their PR team or road monkeys made up the term on the spot.

It took 18 months to fix. That's about right for them 

According to el Reg it was longer. They took an unspecified period of time from when the issue was first reported to rip out all their cabling and start again, then another 18 months from there to recognise and diagnose that it was an EMI problem. Knowing BT that unspecified initial period was probably another 18 months. So, it's not just BT that hire monkeys, it looks like the BBC news also does now, to have swallowed the spin and publish it as only 18 months in total.

The original Bodge-itTelecom Openretch press release is here.

Local Openreach engineer, Michael Jones, was determined to find the Aberhosan broadband smoking gun – so he decided to call on the assistance of colleagues from Openreach’s Chief Engineer team – the company’s telecoms equivalent of the ‘SAS’.

Rough translation: "We finally handed the problem over to 'engineers' who can actually read and write, and seldom use crayon to do so."

I once had an Openretch 'engineer' come to fix a problem on my line who did not know what I was talking about when I described the noise I was hearing on the line as "white noise".

[Specmaster]

Send that video to the most disrespectful cretin papers. They'll be all over it after that woman killed someone pulling out of a base.

Trouble with doing that is that it also shows my registration number as well, They had their headlights on so there clearly was something wrong with the cars electrics, blown fuse for the sidelights or something as they would have seen that their headlights were on and possibly thought that I was complaining about being cut up or something, and they didnt want to get involved in a road rage incident, who knows 

[25 CPS]

I have not encountered this term before, which I find suspicious. EMC/EMI is a topic I really strive to keep current in.
Citation:
'The TV was found to be emitting a single high-level impulse noise (SHINE), which causes electrical interference in other devices.'

The remainder is here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-54239180

As far as other news are concerned, I am feeling quite sick  Seems I have lost in the preservability fight yesterday. WTF, it did not taste as bad as it feels!

If it's related to openreach it says their PR team or road monkeys made up the term on the spot.

It took 18 months to fix. That's about right for them 

According to el Reg it was longer. They took an unspecified period of time from when the issue was first reported to rip out all their cabling and start again, then another 18 months from there to recognise and diagnose that it was an EMI problem. Knowing BT that unspecified initial period was probably another 18 months. So, it's not just BT that hire monkeys, it looks like the BBC news also does now, to have swallowed the spin and publish it as only 18 months in total.

The original Bodge-itTelecom Openretch press release is here.

Local Openreach engineer, Michael Jones, was determined to find the Aberhosan broadband smoking gun – so he decided to call on the assistance of colleagues from Openreach’s Chief Engineer team – the company’s telecoms equivalent of the ‘SAS’.

Rough translation: "We finally handed the problem over to 'engineers' who can actually read and write, and seldom use crayon to do so."

I once had an Openretch 'engineer' come to fix a problem on my line who did not know what I was talking about when I described the noise I was hearing on the line as "white noise".

What I haven't seen mentioned in any of the articles about this but I'm really curious about:  The TV set itself.  What sort of TV was it and why was it radiating such powerful interference?

[Robert763]

The EMC term "SHINE" was new to me too (EMI/EMC s part of my day job). A quick Google indicates it's ADSL specfic terminology.
https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/rein.htm