Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

Bah, missed discord again  , spent the time driving around the supermarkets in a failed attempt to purchase some Mother's Day cards and presents, all cards and flowers etc completely sold out 

Shows how little imagination these accountants have in controlling the stocks they buy and hold. During this pandemic, they have had pretty much a monopoly on things like cards etc as the card shops are not allowed to open. Wouldn't you have thought that they would have ordered larger stocks knowing that they had the market cornered? 

You're not the only one. I forgot today was Saturday which means I missed Discord. 

[med6753]

Today  (Saturday) arrival:

The long awaited letter from overseas!  Thanks med for sending me this nice PCB adapter. 

Geez....took long enough for it to get to you but I'm glad it finally arrived. 

[mnementh]

         

Here you go bd.... I think I may have found a keyboard we can't beat to death. 

This ReDragon K556 has been on my RADAR for a while; I like the compact footprint, minimalist design and and was interested in the promise of an aluminum chassis. Did they ever deliver on that! Bottom frame is aluminum extrusion; top is  1.55mm brushed-finish black anodized plate. Even the end-caps are aluminum. 

I'd been thinking aboot this one or the white-backlit Durgod K310 for a while; when I got lucky and Windoze activated with the Key off the side of the boi's old PC, I decided it was okay to actually shop a new KB for me and kick my old one down to him. The clincher was yesterday morning when the K556 showed up in my Wish List with a $20 off Prime Member discount; that made it ~US$66 delivered.

According to reviews, switches are Outemu browns; they are nice & quiet with a medium detent at approx 2mm/50% deflection. The metal chassis makes the dull thunk as the keys bottom out quite satisfying to these brutish old dwagon paws.

As you can see, they included an assortment of other keys for you to experiment with. In this application, I think I'll stick with the original switches; maybe shop a set of Romer-Gs or even genuine Cherry browns if they don't hold up.

The only thing I see that bothers me even a little is the fact they used SMD RGB LEDs on the mainboard instead of the usual 3mm LED inside the keycap; as brightness and clarity are more than adequate, I only mind this in principle, and will choose to see it as one less probable point of failure.

mnem
*clicky-clicky-clickety-clickety*

[Specmaster]

That is so similar to my keyboard but with full RGB lighting and complete metal casing which mine doesn't have. Mine is a heavy duty plastic bottom and aluminum chassis and top plate, giving it a solid feeling and has a decent heft to it. 

[Brumby]

Krell (of Altair IV) technology!

[Cerebus]

But does he have monsters from the Id? And if so, does he keep them in his cellar?

[VK5RC]

Wee interlude yesterday when Larry Minor needed pops help with a reasonable size old pine on a road boundary so dusted off #2 Husky and fitted the 24" bar to do the business. Still it needed a wire rope on it and drew the short straw for that 8m up in the digger bucket to fasten it.
~800mm at the butt and came down under full control of the 14t digger....totally uneventful. 

Don't ya love it when a plan comes together. 

Bloody handy thing to have around - a 14t digger! Nothing like the irresistible force. 👍

[Cerebus]

Is a 14t digger any relation to a 14 st Digger?

[Brumby]

So this happened and I am already more than broke  Original listing was $200 and I sent in an offer at $140 and the seller responded with a counter of $175. eBay auction: #154358978444

Having a casual trawl for later I see the price is now revised to $150 and with a small evilbay discount it would be $144  All yours Aussie TEA 

Why do I feel I should thank you, Bean?

My lowball offer of $100 was countered with $125 ... which I thought about for an hour or so - then gave in.   


My wallet isn't smiling at you right now ...


 ... but I have a bit of kit on the way!!!!   

[tautech]

Wee interlude yesterday when Larry Minor needed pops help with a reasonable size old pine on a road boundary so dusted off #2 Husky and fitted the 24" bar to do the business. Still it needed a wire rope on it and drew the short straw for that 8m up in the digger bucket to fasten it.
~800mm at the butt and came down under full control of the 14t digger....totally uneventful. 

Don't ya love it when a plan comes together. 

Bloody handy thing to have around - a 14t digger! Nothing like the irresistible force. 👍

Certainly and it's nice when it comes back to the farm for a few weeks whereas it spends a lot of time getting moved from job to job around the greater Auckland region. 2020 lockdown was great to have both Larry Minor's machines home and we got through a power of improvements around the place and with few interruptions.

Still, it's the operator that makes the difference and now Larry Minor has some 15 years in excavators he's pretty slick for a young chap where in my decades of generally being around machinery I've never seen anyone else do some of the tricks young Larry can do.   

[mnementh]

Amazon Heads-Up : SN-02BM Chinese Crimpers & Connector Kit

         

While looking for JST-SH connectors to make up a few cables for my new PC case project ( I was planning to do it the hard way with pliers and soldering), I discovered this kit on Amazon.ca for ridiculously cheap (Cad$42/US$35):

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B082234HSS/

Over 2000 pieces of Chinese clone JST-XH connectors and 0.100" "Dupont" connectors along with a crimper that looks suspiciously well-made in the photos. So I decided to take a gamble; what arrived was much better quality than expected. Plier body plates meet well without slop, it has adjustable tension, the dies are made of ground steel rather than sintered metal, and as you can see, they meet very precisely.

I made up a few small speaker wires with JST-XH for a project; all crimped successfully with zero grief. The crimps are all tin-plated brass; I scraped the coating off to be sure. The "Dupont" crimps are obviously also cheap clone bits as well; they don't have the long diagonally meshing crimps over the insulation like real Dupont ends have, but rather are shorter and probably designed for this type of crimper. When I get to that part of the project I'll report back on how they turned out.

https://www.amazon.com/Hautton-Crimping-Terminal-Ratcheting-Connectors/dp/B083DRCFRY

This particular kit does not appear to be available on the US site; however they do appear to offer similar kits under other "brands". The key search term appears to be SN-02BM , the model number of the crimping pliers. They also appear to have a cousin, the SN-28B , made for larger non-insulation crimp connectors as we commonly use in automotive applications with ring, spade & bullet connectors.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=SN-02BM&ref=nb_sb_noss

Bottom line is that I probably wouldn't use these crimps for anything mission-critical; but the crimpers are definitely much better than the price, and for random connector stuff to knock a project together quick at low cost, I think the entire kit's a positive winner all the way around.

mnem
*toolish ol' dwagon*

[mnementh]

Krell (of Altair IV) technology!

Nawww... that's what Nemo powered the Nautilus with.

mnem
*knocks self unconscious with a Dupont mallet*

[mansaxel]

Is this better? 

Erratic torque on fastening semiconductors is a serious thing. Torque tools is a very deep rabbit hole. It's nice down here.

[mansaxel]

Bah, missed discord again  , spent the time driving around the supermarkets in a failed attempt to purchase some Mother's Day cards and presents, all cards and flowers etc completely sold out 

Shows how little imagination these accountants have in controlling the stocks they buy and hold. During this pandemic, they have had pretty much a monopoly on things like cards etc as the card shops are not allowed to open. Wouldn't you have thought that they would have ordered larger stocks knowing that they had the market cornered? 

I've bought my wife an Avo Minor for Mothers Day (which does not occur until May 30th here, it's one of those things that exist in most of the world but is on different days in different countries, and this one is not differing through calendar reform in the 18 century..)

[Saskia]

No discord, still on the road

Less typing, more driving!

Safe Journey

When I am doing 200 kph Hubby always set I should not be eating while reading

[med6753]

Recap of the Type 321A is complete and here's what we got on power up. A mess. Initially the PSU was whining bloody murder and checking the master 10V reference found it to be over 12V. The adjust pot was flaky. Cleaned it up and now steady 10.04V and PSU settled down. Verified all the PSU voltages including ripple and they are all good. HV test point of -720V is reading -730V so that's good.

Can move that poor excuse of a trace up and down vertically and there is vertical deflection if I apply a signal. So it appears vertical circuit is for the most part working. If I move the horizontal position knob full anti-clockwise I get that bright spot. And I can vary the intensity and get a sharp spot with the focus. That is consistent with the picture I saw in the seller's CL ad. The muddy trace shown in the first picture does not change at all with sweep speed or trigger adj. So I suspect we got a sweep issue and that's where I'm going to start troubleshooting. 


   

[ch_scr]

med6753: Looking at the Type321A from this angle I just realized: It sure does look quite cute
Also, after sleeping it over, I am a lot happier with my purchase.

[beanflying]

So this happened and I am already more than broke  Original listing was $200 and I sent in an offer at $140 and the seller responded with a counter of $175. eBay auction: #154358978444

Having a casual trawl for later I see the price is now revised to $150 and with a small evilbay discount it would be $144  All yours Aussie TEA 

Why do I feel I should thank you, Bean?

My lowball offer of $100 was countered with $125 ... which I thought about for an hour or so - then gave in.   


My wallet isn't smiling at you right now ...


 ... but I have a bit of kit on the way!!!!   

So things being well you will have a Counter that will be a check against your RF Sig Gen I 'found' for you a while ago You do of course now understand the NEED for a GPSDO to confirm the new Counter 

Thanks for saving MY Wallet by YOUR sacrifice 

[bd139]

         

Here you go bd.... I think I may have found a keyboard we can't beat to death. 

This ReDragon K556 has been on my RADAR for a while; I like the compact footprint, minimalist design and and was interested in the promise of an aluminum chassis. Did they ever deliver on that! Bottom frame is aluminum extrusion; top is  1.55mm brushed-finish black anodized plate. Even the end-caps are aluminum. 

I'd been thinking aboot this one or the white-backlit Durgod K310 for a while; when I got lucky and Windoze activated with the Key off the side of the boi's old PC, I decided it was okay to actually shop a new KB for me and kick my old one down to him. The clincher was yesterday morning when the K556 showed up in my Wish List with a $20 off Prime Member discount; that made it ~US$66 delivered.

According to reviews, switches are Outemu browns; they are nice & quiet with a medium detent at approx 2mm/50% deflection. The metal chassis makes the dull thunk as the keys bottom out quite satisfying to these brutish old dwagon paws.

As you can see, they included an assortment of other keys for you to experiment with. In this application, I think I'll stick with the original switches; maybe shop a set of Romer-Gs or even genuine Cherry browns if they don't hold up.

The only thing I see that bothers me even a little is the fact they used SMD RGB LEDs on the mainboard instead of the usual 3mm LED inside the keycap; as brightness and clarity are more than adequate, I only mind this in principle, and will choose to see it as one less probable point of failure.

mnem
*clicky-clicky-clickety-clickety*

I did actually take a look at those here when I was shopping around. They’re £40 a pop which isn’t bad. The only thing that put me off is I know what cherry reds feel like and I didn’t want any variation. If I bugger this K320 I’ll head in that direction as the pricing is better 

Any idea what processor it has on it. I’ve looked at the K320 and if you brick it, it’s a standard STM32 part. Assume it’s probably same or similar.

[Robert763]

Is this better? 

Much more proper. We used to get wrapped over the knuckles (yes physically not verbally) for undressed screws in School so why should you escape here 

But what is the torque setting? One or more may be over or under tightened. Unless you adjusting the washer thickness or using bellville washers (which is possible with Telequipment).
I once knew a model engineer who would put hand made chamfered and hardened washers under critical faasteners and then adjusted the thickness so the flats lined up. Having a surface grinder makes this a lot easier.

[Mortymore]

...


Afaik, the mysterious device is a Xenon filled flash lamp for special lighting purposes, e.g. microscope photography.

That is so cool! Thanks for sharing. 

The device seems to be something like this Hamamatsu Xeon flash lamps:
https://www.hamamatsu.com/eu/en/product/type/L4634-01/index.html

[bd139]

Ok bodge time. D755 connector is toast so I’m repurposing it as a boot.

Have eviscerated the contacts which appear to be slightly burned and reused the connector shells. Will drill out the original pins in the connector and use it for cable entry only. So I’ve taken the mains connector and turned it into a simple right angle “strain relief” and passed the conductors through the connector body. I’ll terminate these on the inside and glue the entire plug and socket assembly into one solid unit on the back of the scope. There are also locking pins on there I will use that stops the connector getting pulled. I’ve got some extremely heavy duty heat shrink which will be used on the tail of the connector as well.

I’m sure it’ll violate many safety things but less than the current situation.

[Saskia]

Seems that the flaky Psu is back among the living. Cabel connection was acting up. New PSUs are on order and will hopefully arrive soon.

[Brumby]

So things being well you will have a Counter that will be a check against your RF Sig Gen I 'found' for you a while ago You do of course now understand the NEED for a GPSDO to confirm the new Counter 

You had to remind me.

I still have a couple of those on my ePay Watch List - from several months ago.

Thanks for saving MY Wallet by YOUR sacrifice 

I'm feeling slightly "used" here...



 ... but I have a bit of kit on the way!!!!   

[djadeski]

I am dropping in on this huge topic to give a shout out and big thank you to med6753 for publishing his idea and circuit to stabilize the Fluke 8000A. 

I recently picked this a 8000A locally for cheap (hope this qualifies for this thread) and it was relatively unstable with the 5volt filter cap swollen and the +15 supply low.  I followed med6753s advice and swapped out the caps and installed voltage regulators and built the 5 volt supply.   Its stable and reads 4.99 vs. my DMMCheck which is 5.0000. A couple of pics are at the bottom I hope.

So its working now and is reliable enough for what it is.

There is tons of great info here and I appreciate you all sharing you knowledge and experience.

Thanks again
Dave