Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[SilverSolder]

Oh ffs. Youtube is crawling with that shit. It scares me.

Some cultures do not have risk management capability apparently. Perhaps that's why we outsource there.

Maybe we are just p*ssies? 

We should build some more extreme things to show who's boss! 

[bd139]

After you! 

[Zucca]

Youtube is crawling with that shit. It scares me.

YT is even more dangerous than 5G 

[nfmax]

Well fuck. Some stupid ass tree surgeons just cut through my fucking phone line. 

It is Monday, isn't it?      

Monday should be the gas man, though

[bd139]

Well fuck. Some stupid ass tree surgeons just cut through my fucking phone line. 

It is Monday, isn't it?      

Monday should be the gas man, though

[tonyalbus]

My Osciloscoop clock arrived....
Friendly seller used DHL to do a quick shipping from China...and nicly declared value of below 35,-
DHL thougt... lets screw this buyer and look the real invoice.. 99,- then charge VAT then charge him for our work an adminitration fee of 17,50
now its not that cheap anymore...
just like my LCR meter got 60,- on top becouse of import... last buys i was not that lucky

[Zucca]

DHL International are bastard monkeys, they show up at the home door and ask all the fee and money they want. Cash only of course and no change back. 
Next time I tell them I have no cash. Bastard.

[Wolfgang]

Somebody here who wants to build some death traps?

Find here some inspirations:



There are more in his video channel....         

There are still some idiots around that claim that natural selection doesnt work. 

[capt bullshot]

There are still some idiots around that claim that natural selection doesnt work. 

v (read my sig) 'nuff said

[mansaxel]

DHL International are bastard monkeys, they show up at the home door and ask all the fee and money they want. Cash only of course and no change back. 
Next time I tell them I have no cash. Bastard.

I have had no cash on me spare a few crowns for several years. All plastic and apps here now.  I get totally thrown-off every time I go to Bargeld-Land, ie. Germany. Naples is worse, though. Apparently the informal economy in southern Italy thrives on cash and not so much on credit cards.

Here, they know better than to show up like that. You get a slip in the mailbox telling you to pay an invoice, or a summons to go fetch the package at this or that shipping company representative (usually a nearby supermarket) at which point you can pay.  The remnants of the post office are very ruthless on this; I stopped buying things from China altogether.

[nfmax]

OK this is not really TEA-related, but most of us are used to handling really big .CSV files - unlike, it seems, the good people at Public Health England:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/how-excel-may-have-caused-loss-of-16000-covid-tests-in-england

[BU508A]

Oh no! Please! No Covid stuff here!     
This is nearly a guarantee to get the thread locked.

 

[Cerebus]

I've soldered with different Weller soldering stations throughout the years and found them to be very good at their job.
Currently I have two WECP-20 and a EC 2002 "antistatic".

I noticed that I have three of them because changing the tip is a pita. These three soldering station eat up valuable space, their cords interfere with each other and I happen to use only one station regularly.
I've come to a point where it's clear to me that only for having it a little more easy to change top another tip by firing up the next station has come to an end.

The T12-based soldering station have caught my attention long ago; For me the T12 cartrigde with integrated heater (better/faster heat delivery to the tip) have the advantage of being able to be changed quickly by just unplugging and plugging. If one uses a silicone heat insulation pad it's possible even with hot tip -unlike the Weller with its srewed mechanism (pun intended).

After all that's been said about the Metcals I might consider them, too. -if one should come cheap one day.   

The irony here is that the Metcals are the easiest things in the world to change a tip on, but you don't do it because they're so flexible in use/application that you don't generally need to.

To change the tip on a Metcal:

• Turn power off - 2 seconds
• Grip tip with silicone rubber pad - 2 seconds
• Pull off - 1 second
• Put down, pick up new tip, either cold or hot with pad - 2 - 5 seconds
• Push new tip into iron - 1 second
• Turn on power and wait for it to hit soldering heat - 6 seconds

Total - 17 seconds or less  soldering with one tip to soldering with another and no hassle. And this is no exaggeration. On the classic MX and SP series the plug end of the tips is cool enough to handle directly even though the other end is still blazing hot. I've not used the type that BD139 has where the driver coil is not integrated into the tips the way it is on the MX and SP series.

[Cerebus]

coil assembly = cartridge.

I suspect I killed mine by dropping the handpiece on the floor to be fair.

Thanks.

Sounds like the cartridge is a bit delicate, doesn't it?      

The iron that BD has got is one of the PS 'production' series. They have a handle, a coil and a tip as separate items. The classic MX and SP series have the coil and tip as an integrated replaceable unit. I think the theory is that for the production series the ability to replace the coil and/or tip separately will lead to lower overall replacement costs as these irons are intended to be used continuously all day and you expect to actually consume your consumables. The MX and SP irons were once the only designs, with the MX designated for rework/technician use and the SP for production use.

[Cerebus]

Somebody here who wants to build some death traps?

Find here some inspirations:



There are more in his video channel....         

I'm a bit worried about the apparent size of the hole in the middle of those LEDs because we know that if there's a hole of a certain size there's always some bloke who's gonna stick his [remains of this message truncated by DecencyFilterBot-2000].

[tonyalbus]

DHL International are bastard monkeys, they show up at the home door and ask all the fee and money they want. Cash only of course and no change back. 
Next time I tell them I have no cash. Bastard.

I have had no cash on me spare a few crowns for several years. All plastic and apps here now.  I get totally thrown-off every time I go to Bargeld-Land, ie. Germany. Naples is worse, though. Apparently the informal economy in southern Italy thrives on cash and not so much on credit cards.

Here, they know better than to show up like that. You get a slip in the mailbox telling you to pay an invoice, or a summons to go fetch the package at this or that shipping company representative (usually a nearby supermarket) at which point you can pay.  The remnants of the post office are very ruthless on this; I stopped buying things from China altogether.

i paid with an App...they dan't take cash...i would not pay cash... now it is registred i have paid.
there is an email adres where i can complain about the charges, so i did.
on the box was an ivoice of 35 Dollar, so 21% VAT of that can never be 35,70 Euro of tax... there administration fee is rediculous, but what can you do. so i complain about the VAT calculation and asked a refund.. lets see, it was to easy to just let it go...

[tonyalbus]

My Osciloscoop clock arrived....
Friendly seller used DHL to do a quick shipping from China...and nicly declared value of below 35,-
DHL thougt... lets screw this buyer and look the real invoice.. 99,- then charge VAT then charge him for our work an adminitration fee of 17,50
now its not that cheap anymore...
just like my LCR meter got 60,- on top becouse of import... last buys i was not that lucky

friendly chinese did not send a manual or build plan...great becouse on the PCB the text says U1,D1 and R36 etc and not 10k,1n4148 etc...
 

[tonyalbus]

is it full moon today...ffs not a good day....

[PA0PBZ]

friendly chinese did not send a manual or build plan...great becouse on the PCB the text says U1,D1 and R36 etc and not 10k,1n4148 etc...

See attachment 

[tonyalbus]

friendly chinese did not send a manual or build plan...great becouse on the PCB the text says U1,D1 and R36 etc and not 10k,1n4148 etc...

See attachment 

Yes!!! Thanks a million...

You have the clock yourself?
it seems very cool...

[Specmaster]

I've soldered with different Weller soldering stations throughout the years and found them to be very good at their job.
Currently I have two WECP-20 and a EC 2002 "antistatic".

I noticed that I have three of them because changing the tip is a pita. These three soldering station eat up valuable space, their cords interfere with each other and I happen to use only one station regularly.
I've come to a point where it's clear to me that only for having it a little more easy to change top another tip by firing up the next station has come to an end.

The T12-based soldering station have caught my attention long ago; For me the T12 cartrigde with integrated heater (better/faster heat delivery to the tip) have the advantage of being able to be changed quickly by just unplugging and plugging. If one uses a silicone heat insulation pad it's possible even with hot tip -unlike the Weller with its srewed mechanism (pun intended).

After all that's been said about the Metcals I might consider them, too. -if one should come cheap one day.   

The irony here is that the Metcals are the easiest things in the world to change a tip on, but you don't do it because they're so flexible in use/application that you don't generally need to.

To change the tip on a Metcal:

• Turn power off - 2 seconds
• Grip tip with silicone rubber pad - 2 seconds
• Pull off - 1 second
• Put down, pick up new tip, either cold or hot with pad - 2 - 5 seconds
• Push new tip into iron - 1 second
• Turn on power and wait for it to hit soldering heat - 6 seconds

Total - 17 seconds or less  soldering with one tip to soldering with another and no hassle. And this is no exaggeration. On the classic MX and SP series the plug end of the tips is cool enough to handle directly even though the other end is still blazing hot. I've not used the type that BD139 has where the driver coil is not integrated into the tips the way it is on the MX and SP series.

Well, thats essentially much the same for T12 as well 

[BravoV]

The MX and SP irons were once the only designs, with the MX designated for rework/technician use and the SP for production use.

Metcal noob here, does SP and MX use the same cartridge type ? And also the handle ?

[bd139]

Cerebus is on the mark as usual. The PS series I picked because this was a production iron rather than a rework iron. It has three parts: the handpiece, cartridge and tip, each replaceable on the fly. The tips take 5 seconds to swap out. The cartridge 20 seconds and the handpiece about 30 seconds. The whole thing is designed to not cost you time. Also the tips are a lot cheaper 

The MX series is completely different.

The T12 has the equivalent of the tip and the cartridge in one unit and the handle separately. It works pretty well but the engineering tolerances of the handles are terrible as are the contact mounts. I was not impressed. For 20% more cost, they could have put together a 100% better iron that would literally shat on the competition on price/performance. But as always they missed the mark in the race to the bottom.

Anyway, on to something cool. 6294A is now fixed. My capacitor arrived so I made a little adapter board for it:



This was then bolted into the chassis in place of the old capacitor with M4 hardware. There are three spacer washers between the board and the main PCB.



Job done, and if an original part comes along it can be substituted in no problems at all.

And it works nicely 

[mnementh]

Somebody here who wants to build some death traps?

Find here some inspirations:



There are more in his video channel....         

There are still some idiots around that claim that natural selection doesnt work. 

Ooooohhh! electric cock ring!!! I'll take three!!! 

mnem
What could possibly go wrong...?

[Specmaster]

Cerebus is on the mark as usual. The PS series I picked because this was a production iron rather than a rework iron. It has three parts: the handpiece, cartridge and tip, each replaceable on the fly. The tips take 5 seconds to swap out. The cartridge 20 seconds and the handpiece about 30 seconds. The whole thing is designed to not cost you time. Also the tips are a lot cheaper 

The MX series is completely different.

The T12 has the equivalent of the tip and the cartridge in one unit and the handle separately. It works pretty well but the engineering tolerances of the handles are terrible as are the contact mounts. I was not impressed. For 20% more cost, they could have put together a 100% better iron that would literally shat on the competition on price/performance. But as always they missed the mark in the race to the bottom.

Anyway, on to something cool. 6294A is now fixed. My capacitor arrived so I made a little adapter board for it:



This was then bolted into the chassis in place of the old capacitor with M4 hardware. There are three spacer washers between the board and the main PCB.



Job done, and if an original part comes along it can be substituted in no problems at all.

And it works nicely 

Very neat solution 

Edit:
I think part of the problem with the T12 systems is that there are so many manufacturers of it in China and hence why some have a good result while others have a shit show. I don't completely agree with the handles being the weak link, more like the cloned tips, in my experience it's the bottom ring contact that causes the problems sometimes due to it not always sitting perfectly flat or securely clamped together at the join. I think if you can source a genuine Hakko tip, they would be almost perfect.