Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Mr. Scram]

I'm not sure what free stuff we're talking about but if the Ferengi is passing I may not want to know.

[Specmaster]

No time to work on the Type 310A today. The Lady is arriving this afternoon. I may or may not be on Discord tomorrow. It depends. She want's to cook dinner Saturday rather than us go out. Fried chicken and Mac and cheese. Everything neither one of us is supposed to have.  And when she is using my kitchen I am banned from entering. So I might get on. She knows I participate with a bunch of creepy guys on line anyway. 

Banned eh, do you find any unexplained foil cases etc after she goes back to the big smoke 

[AVGresponding]

I'm not sure what free stuff we're talking about but if the Ferengi is passing I may not want to know.

Self-sealing stem bolts maybe?

[bd139]

I'm not sure what free stuff we're talking about but if the Ferengi is passing I may not want to know.

PL310.

Ferengi mode off for a bit here. Unless it’s small, cheap, broken and Fluke.

[med6753]

No time to work on the Type 310A today. The Lady is arriving this afternoon. I may or may not be on Discord tomorrow. It depends. She want's to cook dinner Saturday rather than us go out. Fried chicken and Mac and cheese. Everything neither one of us is supposed to have.  And when she is using my kitchen I am banned from entering. So I might get on. She knows I participate with a bunch of creepy guys on line anyway. 

Banned eh, do you find any unexplained foil cases etc after she goes back to the big smoke 

No. She is one hell of a good cook. And when she's exercising her craft so want's no interruptions or someone getting in her way and being a pest. So unless I'm asked to help I watch from afar.   

[BravoV]

Got an offer, Tek 465B at $40, cosmetically flawless but complete dead, never opened nor repaired, worth the risk ?

[med6753]

Got an offer, Tek 465B at $40, cosmetically flawless but complete dead, never opened nor repaired, worth the risk ?

$40? No brainer. Go for it. Both bd and myself can help you fix it if you get stuck.

Edit.....most likely a shorted tant holding down one of the supply voltages.

[BravoV]

Got an offer, Tek 465B at $40, cosmetically flawless but complete dead, never opened nor repaired, worth the risk ?

$40? No brainer. Go for it. Both bd and myself can help you fix it if you get stuck.

Edit.....most likely a shorted tant holding down one of the supply voltages.

Thanks  , wish me luck.

[Ice-Tea]

@Ice-Tea do you happen to have an Agilent N6700 or similar ?

I have modules for it, not the mainframe. Define "similar"? I have 1U powersupplies. I have chroma loads. I have various other power supplies. I have VXI power supplies. I have... What are the specs you're looking for?

Do you have a spare elephant?   

I had one, sold it to a Nigerian Prince, though.

[tggzzz]

UK fleabay £1 selling fees offer.

[AVGresponding]

I'm not sure what free stuff we're talking about but if the Ferengi is passing I may not want to know.

PL310.

Ferengi mode off for a bit here. Unless it’s small, cheap, broken and Fluke.

*considers foisting the broken Fluke 8050A off on bd*

Do you have a spare elephant?   

I had one, sold it to a Nigerian Prince, though.

You won't be able to follow in Edison's footsteps then.

[Mr. Scram]

PL310.

Ferengi mode off for a bit here. Unless it’s small, cheap, broken and Fluke.

Who are you and what did you do with bd139?

[Specmaster]

PL310.

Ferengi mode off for a bit here. Unless it’s small, cheap, broken and Fluke.

Who are you and what did you do with bd139?

Relax bd139 is fine as long as he does as he is told  The reason why his Ferengi mode is off is because it was my PM that was in front of his forum message, I have the PL310 winging its way over the ditch to me, sorry bd139 

[BU508A]

Good boy our bd139 he is, isn't he? 

[Specmaster]

Good boy our bd139 he is, isn't he? 

He sure is, he's a diamond geezer is our bd139, wealth of knowledge as well he is  .

[AVGresponding]

Uploaded the HP 66311B teardown peek inside/testing pics at last. Not a full teardown as this thing is complex to disassemble and I had limited time and wanted to get to the testing bit. Fair warning, pic heavy post:

Front panel is a bit grubby, with a missing twirly-knob, the feet are missing, but at least there's no stupid tilting handle to remove. The dimple on the right side promises a useful hole in the moulding, hopefully there are at least two and preferably four, so I can add binding posts:


Bloody hell no wonder this thing is heavy, the case is 1.5mm thick, and near 400mm long! The transformer has a ludicrous number of taps, and looks at least 200VA, and like the K2000 it's mounted at the wrong end of the case!



The fan is not horribly noisy, but just intrusive enough that I will probably swap it out for a more modern one at some point. I thought at first the long aluminium extrusion was a power brick, but it's just a heatsink, with some TO247 trannies and TO220 diode packs on it. As you can see there's quite a lot of unpopulated pads, presumably for the D variant which has dual outputs.


Bonus! Definitely two holes suitable for binding posts, should be enough room to butcher modify the panel to take four.


The control and interface sections are harder to see, the PLDs etc are on an inverted daughter board. You can peek in through the side though. I'll have to have another look at what that out-of-focus thing is that looks like an axial cap, looks like it's bodged in:


Time for some testing. I had to program it at about 3mV and 300uA over in order to get an indicated 10V in CV and 10 (9.99) mA in CC modes:


Fluke says, "close enough m8":


I set the resistance decade to as close to 1k as I could get it, to use as a load:


With a 1k load at 10 volts, should draw 10mA, let's see... dayum those display filters are shiney!


And with a 10k load:


With the output switched off there's a residual voltage on the HP display, so I decided to check it with the Fluke 8840A to see if it's really there:


Yup, it's really there... I am very impressed with the accuracy of the metering on this power supply, seems like I can stop looking for a precision supply as I now have one. I'm guessing the offsets I had to program in are possibly down to my hastily improvised output leads. I did make them twisted pairs as per the manual, but perhaps they are too small a gauge (0.22mm²).
I tried various loads, and linking them in and out was unable to get the output voltage to deviate by more than 200uV. Sadly this human forgot to make any noise measurements, I'll get to that later when I have the time (to warm all the units up and make a nice clean measuring setup).

[mnementh]

No time to work on the Type 310A today. The Lady is arriving this afternoon. I may or may not be on Discord tomorrow. It depends. She want's to cook dinner Saturday rather than us go out. Fried chicken and Mac and cheese. Everything neither one of us is supposed to have.  And when she is using my kitchen I am banned from entering. So I might get on. She knows I participate with a bunch of creepy guys on line anyway. 

Thanks for the compliment, ya dirty-minded ol' coot.  Just remember that today's Friday, and Discord is tomorrow. 

mnem

[mnementh]

I'm not sure what free stuff we're talking about but if the Ferengi is passing I may not want to know.

Self-sealing stem bolts maybe?

I'll take 'em. All 100 gross. You never know when your bolt is gonna develop a leaky stem.

mnem
They make a cream for that...

[mnementh]

PL310.

Ferengi mode off for a bit here. Unless it’s small, cheap, broken and Fluke.

Who are you and what did you do with bd139?

Relax bd139 is fine as long as he does as he is told  The reason why his Ferengi mode is off is because it was my PM that was in front of his forum message, I have the PL310 winging its way over the ditch to me, sorry bd139 

*sigh*

For once, living in the capitalist consumer capitol of the world (or right next door) works against me; so many neato toys I've seen IT post here and I cannot partake due to abhorrent shipping & duty costs.

I shall endeavour to enjoy the successes of others vicariously, however. 

mnem
*toddles off to nuke a leaf-blower*

[mnementh]

Uploaded the HP 66311B teardown peek inside/testing pics at last. Not a full teardown as this thing is complex to disassemble and I had limited time and wanted to get to the testing bit. Fair warning, pic heavy post:
(SNIP OODLES OF PICS OF A WALL O' TE)

I am just waiting for the sudden silence, then a post from some local friend of yours that you were lost in a avalanche of TE... 

Honestly tho... isn't that the way we ALL wish we could go...?


mnem
"Today is a good day to die... under a metric fuck-ton of test equipment!" ~The TEA-Warrior's Battle Cry

[mansaxel]

"As-is" 6206 picked up. It's more of an "As-was", TBH.  2 meagre layers of bubble wrap in an US Mail box. Meter pushed in. Rattles inside. The meter frame was found in the packaging, looks OK. Power switch rocker is ground flat to blend in with the front panel.

Mains cable was cut, already on the sale pictures, so this will be a multi-step approach; wiz:

• Get refund. 
• Test level of prior damage 
• Life support
• Un-gunk
• Fix

[shakalnokturn]

"Today is a good day to die... under a metric fuck-ton of test equipment!" ~The TEA-Warrior's Battle Cry

Need to get that added to the TEA introduction post #1.

[bd139]

"As-is" 6206 picked up. It's more of an "As-was", TBH.  2 meagre layers of bubble wrap in an US Mail box. Meter pushed in. Rattles inside. The meter frame was found in the packaging, looks OK. Power switch rocker is ground flat to blend in with the front panel.

Mains cable was cut, already on the sale pictures, so this will be a multi-step approach; wiz:

• Get refund. 
• Test level of prior damage 
• Life support
• Un-gunk
• Fix

Oh joy. To be fair the meters on them have ridiculously brittle plastic. I had one of the little plastic cased ones turn up in pieces. Picture here from cubdriver who had one disintegrate on him ages ago:



I may still part with mine if you want one that isn't fucked as I mostly use the 6205 now

[Ice-Tea]

*sigh*

For once, living in the capitalist consumer capitol of the world (or right next door) works against me; so many neato toys I've seen IT post here and I cannot partake due to abhorrent shipping & duty costs.

I shall endeavour to enjoy the successes of others vicariously, however. 

mnem
*toddles off to nuke a leaf-blower*

For future reference: the prices I list on eBay include 21% local VAT, I don't need to charge that outside the EU. So, that cancels out the import duties. Shipping to the US is not that horrible, actually. But for some reason shipping to their more civilized neighbours bumps the price considerably...

For freebees, however, and repair-for-fun opportunities it most certainly is a hard hurdle to take

[mansaxel]

I may still part with mine if you want one that isn't fucked as I mostly use the 6205 now

I'll see what I can get out of this one first. OTOH, if I can get my money back, I've got TE cash burning in my pocket...

You never can have too many power supplies

But, before that, finish this Gin & Tonic while making Friday pizzas.