Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[cyclin_al]

Mmmm paper cuts on your arse. Fun!

Random question: does anyone know which company I can head to for a hammer drill that isn't a piece of shit? Needs to have a chuck that isn't garbage and needs to be mains powered. Need to use it to blow some light holes in brick work and drill Hammond boxes as well with a step drill.

Edit: currently considering Makita HP1640 at the moment. Proper chuck. Not too many horrible reviews. Available same day on amazon for 70 quid.

That Makita looks alright.  I have a few Makita tools, and appear to rank as prosumer.  Not pro level, but not as heavy as pro tools.  Much better that what crappy tire sells.
Be careful where you buy from.  Buying from Rona (Lowes) gets tools with plastic gears; buying the same tools from a more reputable shop gets tools with metal gears.

I know RIGID tools are great, but they come very expensive.  These only make sense if you will use them frequently and hard.

I have heard people recommend Bosch tools, but do not have any experience myself.

For bits to drill the brick, you must buy Bosch bits.  I have had recent bad experience with others.  People (including some here) convinced me to try Bosch bits and I am now converted 

[Cerebus]

Here is my drill, standard keyless chuck, never had any problems with drills slipping in the chuck etc, good hammer action when needed, drilled hundreds of holes with it, so have my sons, even in concrete. All it needs is some muscles to tighten the chuck and away you go. Modern keyless chucks are a million miles away from those early ones that were to be found on Black and Decker drills and the like. 

Chuck quality is more about balance, concentricity and runout. Any old chuck ought to manage to hold a drill, ones that don't are called paperweights.

Well this one runs good and true, as I said I have had no problems, if I drill 4mm hole, I get a 4mm hole, not 4.5 or 5mm one so I assume it runs true. As far as I'm concerned its perfectly upto the job of drilling holes especially the type of holes most people ever need to make. If you were talking about absolute precision then you world would certainly not be looking for a handheld drill.

Yeah well, you're a sparkie so your idea of a round accurate hole is something you can make with a cold chisel! 

The point was that assessing a chuck by "it grips well" is a rather narrow and insufficient set of criteria. It's no good gripping the drill if it's trying to move the whole tool around the centre of the hole either because it's not concentric or doesn't centre the drill properly - both faults I've found in really cheap chucks. Ditto vibrating your teeth out because of non-concentricity of the whole chuck, even though the drill bit might be concentric. A good impromptu test is "Can you drill a round small hole (say 1mm) in a chunk of soft material like thin-ish aluminium while hand holding it?" alternatively "Can you drill a 1mm hole in something reasonably strong and tough like mild steel plate without snapping the drill bit?". I've used a lot of cheap drills that would fail that test first time.

[Robert763]

I would like to start a new project, number 134 on my list.

I need an old portable DMM, requirements:

1) Must have a large needle display!
2) As cheap as it can be
3) possibly still easily available on the used market
4) banana 4mm input jacks
5) easy to disassemble/hack.
6) nice to have: good old feeling
7) nice to have: not a company big writing on the front

Simpson 260, Triplett 630? any other suggestions?

A DMM with a needle? That's a rare beast.
Mastech M7030?

[mansaxel]

I need an old portable DMM, requirements:

1) Must have a large needle display!

That does not compute.

[Zucca]

I need an old portable DMM, requirements:

1) Must have a large needle display!

That does not compute.

You are always right and I love you. 

[bd139]

Dang, I never realized MrCarlson had so many Tek scopes!

He's holding the poor things hostage and torturing them with his home brew contraptions 

[Cerebus]

Dang, I never realized MrCarlson had so many Tek scopes!

He's holding the poor things hostage and torturing them with his home brew contraptions 

I don't know who he thinks he's kidding with that piddling little aircon unit up in the corner. If he turned them all on he wouldn't need aircon, he'd need fire suppression.

[tggzzz]

A small package of microcontroller SOCs from California just crossed into Canada destined to me.
The date on the packing slip is July 2020 ... 14 months and still not arrived...

You can probably sell those at a large profit at the moment

[mansaxel]

I need an old portable DMM, requirements:

1) Must have a large needle display!

That does not compute.

You are always right and I love you. 

Then you want a Simpson 260 or an Avometer 8. Or, of course an Unigor 4 -ish.

[bd139]

Dang, I never realized MrCarlson had so many Tek scopes!

He's holding the poor things hostage and torturing them with his home brew contraptions 

I don't know who he thinks he's kidding with that piddling little aircon unit up in the corner. If he turned them all on he wouldn't need aircon, he'd need fire suppression.

I think just based on the quantity and probability of a USA mains plug catching fire that he’d be screwed 

Got to say I think that those poor scopes would be happier having Smoke On The Water rammed through their eviscerated organs than be hauled out of their darkened prison and buggered by an unsheathed super probe 

[med6753]

Dang, I never realized MrCarlson had so many Tek scopes!

He's holding the poor things hostage and torturing them with his home brew contraptions 

I don't know who he thinks he's kidding with that piddling little aircon unit up in the corner. If he turned them all on he wouldn't need aircon, he'd need fire suppression.

Yo Sherlock, that's not A/C. It's a gas fired heater. 

[med6753]

Dang, I never realized MrCarlson had so many Tek scopes!

He's holding the poor things hostage and torturing them with his home brew contraptions 

I don't know who he thinks he's kidding with that piddling little aircon unit up in the corner. If he turned them all on he wouldn't need aircon, he'd need fire suppression.

I think just based on the quantity and probability of a USA mains plug catching fire that he’d be screwed 

Got to say I think that those poor scopes would be happier having Smoke On The Water rammed through their eviscerated organs than be hauled out of their darkened prison and buggered by an unsheathed super probe 

Maybe I should become his assistant and slowly have a few of them suddenly find themselves in my CR-V. He'll never miss them. 

[Cerebus]

Yo Sherlock, that's not A/C. It's a gas fired heater. 

Don't be ridiculous, who would need a heater with that many old Tek scopes to hand! Just leave a few turned on and it'd be toasty in there. 

[Specmaster]

Here is my drill, standard keyless chuck, never had any problems with drills slipping in the chuck etc, good hammer action when needed, drilled hundreds of holes with it, so have my sons, even in concrete. All it needs is some muscles to tighten the chuck and away you go. Modern keyless chucks are a million miles away from those early ones that were to be found on Black and Decker drills and the like. 

Chuck quality is more about balance, concentricity and runout. Any old chuck ought to manage to hold a drill, ones that don't are called paperweights.

Well this one runs good and true, as I said I have had no problems, if I drill 4mm hole, I get a 4mm hole, not 4.5 or 5mm one so I assume it runs true. As far as I'm concerned its perfectly upto the job of drilling holes especially the type of holes most people ever need to make. If you were talking about absolute precision then you world would certainly not be looking for a handheld drill.

Yeah well, you're a sparkie so your idea of a round accurate hole is something you can make with a cold chisel! 

The point was that assessing a chuck by "it grips well" is a rather narrow and insufficient set of criteria. It's no good gripping the drill if it's trying to move the whole tool around the centre of the hole either because it's not concentric or doesn't centre the drill properly - both faults I've found in really cheap chucks. Ditto vibrating your teeth out because of non-concentricity of the whole chuck, even though the drill bit might be concentric. A good impromptu test is "Can you drill a round small hole (say 1mm) in a chunk of soft material like thin-ish aluminium while hand holding it?" alternatively "Can you drill a 1mm hole in something reasonably strong and tough like mild steel plate without snapping the drill bit?". I've used a lot of cheap drills that would fail that test first time.

I'm not a sparkie, I'm an electrical engineer, and as such did an extra 4 years of training that sparkies don't do.

Just because some chucks use a key to lock a drill bit in, and some don't, doesn't infer that one type is inferior. No hand held drill is ever going to be, regardless of the make or type of chuck or drill, more capable of making holes with the precision that you seem to implying. 

[med6753]

Speaking of toasty. I was doing some routine cleaning today and noticed this black mark on bench 2. Puzzled me for a moment then I realized what it was. A burn. While I was troubleshooting the Type 547 I left the bottom plate off so I could have access to the PSU components. Well during one of the sessions where the +100V supply decided to blow up one of the cathode resistors got so hot that it unsoldered itself and fell down on the bench burning it. 

[med6753]

Yo Sherlock, that's not A/C. It's a gas fired heater. 

Don't be ridiculous, who would need a heater with that many old Tek scopes to hand! Just leave a few turned on and it'd be toasty in there. 

Well regardless of what you may think or believe that is a heater, not an A/C unit.

[mnementh]

urrrghhh... chiddlers at home and TV decides to have a nervous breakdown. Now trying to get all my router and schizz pulled together so my streaming boxes work on the other TV.

So much for a quiet morning afternoon relaxing with the TEA... 

mnem
Of course... no matter how many remotes I have, I can never find the one I need...

[Specmaster]

Dang, I never realized MrCarlson had so many Tek scopes!

He's holding the poor things hostage and torturing them with his home brew contraptions 

I don't know who he thinks he's kidding with that piddling little aircon unit up in the corner. If he turned them all on he wouldn't need aircon, he'd need fire suppression.

Yo Sherlock, that's not A/C. It's a gas fired heater. 

Yep, as denoted by the yellow pipe.

[med6753]

urrrghhh... chiddlers at home and TV decides to have a nervous breakdown. Now trying to get all my router and schizz pulled together so my streaming boxes work on the other TV.

So much for a quiet morning afternoon relaxing with the TEA... 

mnem
Of course... no matter how many remotes I have, I can never find the one I need...

Didn't they start school today up there? They did here. Full sessions with face masks required.

[Cerebus]

Here is my drill, standard keyless chuck, never had any problems with drills slipping in the chuck etc, good hammer action when needed, drilled hundreds of holes with it, so have my sons, even in concrete. All it needs is some muscles to tighten the chuck and away you go. Modern keyless chucks are a million miles away from those early ones that were to be found on Black and Decker drills and the like. 

Chuck quality is more about balance, concentricity and runout. Any old chuck ought to manage to hold a drill, ones that don't are called paperweights.

Well this one runs good and true, as I said I have had no problems, if I drill 4mm hole, I get a 4mm hole, not 4.5 or 5mm one so I assume it runs true. As far as I'm concerned its perfectly upto the job of drilling holes especially the type of holes most people ever need to make. If you were talking about absolute precision then you world would certainly not be looking for a handheld drill.

Yeah well, you're a sparkie so your idea of a round accurate hole is something you can make with a cold chisel! 

The point was that assessing a chuck by "it grips well" is a rather narrow and insufficient set of criteria. It's no good gripping the drill if it's trying to move the whole tool around the centre of the hole either because it's not concentric or doesn't centre the drill properly - both faults I've found in really cheap chucks. Ditto vibrating your teeth out because of non-concentricity of the whole chuck, even though the drill bit might be concentric. A good impromptu test is "Can you drill a round small hole (say 1mm) in a chunk of soft material like thin-ish aluminium while hand holding it?" alternatively "Can you drill a 1mm hole in something reasonably strong and tough like mild steel plate without snapping the drill bit?". I've used a lot of cheap drills that would fail that test first time.

I'm not a sparkie, I'm an electrical engineer, and as such did an extra 4 years of training that sparkies don't do.

Sorry "posh, overqualified sparkie who tells someone else where to hit the cold chisel". 

Just because some chucks use a key to lock a drill bit in, and some don't, doesn't infer that one type is inferior. No hand held drill is ever going to be, regardless of the make or type of chuck or drill, more capable of making holes with the precision that you seem to implying. 

Nothing to do with keys or not, or precision per se, it's about concentricity and balance of the the bit, the chuck and the motor shaft regardless of whether it's hand held, dangling from a bit of string or cast into a seven tonne block of tungsten. If the bit is offset some distance from the centre line of the whole assembly, or held at an angle to the centre line, it's going to wobble, if the centre of mass of the chuck is offset some distance from the centre line it's going to wobble (or if the drill body is held by seven tonnes of tungsten, destroy the shaft bearings in record time). Wobbling about when trying to drill holes is not good. Again, all I'm saying is that there's more to a good chuck than just "It grips the bit".

Edit: I don't know where you got it into your head that this is about keyed versus keyless chucks. I never say anything about keys, and the most precise chucks  - if we start talking about fixed drilling machines  - are collet chucks, not a key in sight.

[Specmaster]

Here is my drill, standard keyless chuck, never had any problems with drills slipping in the chuck etc, good hammer action when needed, drilled hundreds of holes with it, so have my sons, even in concrete. All it needs is some muscles to tighten the chuck and away you go. Modern keyless chucks are a million miles away from those early ones that were to be found on Black and Decker drills and the like. 

Chuck quality is more about balance, concentricity and runout. Any old chuck ought to manage to hold a drill, ones that don't are called paperweights.

Well this one runs good and true, as I said I have had no problems, if I drill 4mm hole, I get a 4mm hole, not 4.5 or 5mm one so I assume it runs true. As far as I'm concerned its perfectly upto the job of drilling holes especially the type of holes most people ever need to make. If you were talking about absolute precision then you world would certainly not be looking for a handheld drill.

Yeah well, you're a sparkie so your idea of a round accurate hole is something you can make with a cold chisel! 

The point was that assessing a chuck by "it grips well" is a rather narrow and insufficient set of criteria. It's no good gripping the drill if it's trying to move the whole tool around the centre of the hole either because it's not concentric or doesn't centre the drill properly - both faults I've found in really cheap chucks. Ditto vibrating your teeth out because of non-concentricity of the whole chuck, even though the drill bit might be concentric. A good impromptu test is "Can you drill a round small hole (say 1mm) in a chunk of soft material like thin-ish aluminium while hand holding it?" alternatively "Can you drill a 1mm hole in something reasonably strong and tough like mild steel plate without snapping the drill bit?". I've used a lot of cheap drills that would fail that test first time.

I'm not a sparkie, I'm an electrical engineer, and as such did an extra 4 years of training that sparkies don't do.

Sorry "posh, overqualified sparkie who tells someone else where to hit the cold chisel". 

Just because some chucks use a key to lock a drill bit in, and some don't, doesn't infer that one type is inferior. No hand held drill is ever going to be, regardless of the make or type of chuck or drill, more capable of making holes with the precision that you seem to implying. 

Nothing to do with keys or not, or precision per se, it's about concentricity and balance of the the bit, the chuck and the motor shaft regardless of whether it's hand held, dangling from a bit of string or cast into a seven tonne block of tungsten. If the bit is offset some distance from the centre line of the whole assembly, or held at an angle to the centre line, it's going to wobble, if the centre of mass of the chuck is offset some distance from the centre line it's going to wobble (or if the drill body is held by seven tonnes of tungsten, destroy the shaft bearings in record time). Wobbling about when trying to drill holes is not good. Again, all I'm saying is that there's more to a good chuck than just "It grips the bit".

Do such drills still make it to the marketplace? The only drill that I have ever seen that happen on, just happens to be the SDS drill I purchased about 12 years ago, not seen one since. I did think about taking it back, but didn't because at the end of the day it is a big heavy beast  if drilling through a wall etc, there is noway that anyone is ever going to be holding that thing perfectly at right angles to the work piece or keeping it perfectly in line either, its really more of a demolition tool than anything else, drilling a hole is a bonus.

[25 CPS]

Warning - While you were reading 96 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.  

It's orificial: The dwagon has landed... In Brampton. 

The truck's been returned intact and 7 hours early at 2am; the WiFi is online and tomorrow's iced tea is brewing on the counter.

Time for me to drag my sorry carcass off to bed; myassiss dragon.

mnem
 yes dear, I'll bring some bath tissue up with me...

Hold on, you drove a truck through Brampton and it's still intact?

Did you squeak by without being subjected to insurance fraud as well?

Sounds like a fun area. Canuck form of "the hood"? 

Brampton's where you go if you want to play bumper cars with real vehicles.  Insurance fraud scams are rampant there.  One of the most frequent is to pull out of a parking lot in front of a moving car and slam on the brakes to get rear ended, then claim no end of back problems.  I've had a few go-rounds as has everyone I know that's spend time driving through Brampton dealing with the garbage the scam artists pull there.  48% increase on my car insurance after this sort of thing after picking up some soldering equipment.

[Specmaster]

urrrghhh... chiddlers at home and TV decides to have a nervous breakdown. Now trying to get all my router and schizz pulled together so my streaming boxes work on the other TV.

So much for a quiet morning afternoon relaxing with the TEA... 

mnem
Of course... no matter how many remotes I have, I can never find the one I need...

Didn't they start school today up there? They did here. Full sessions with face masks required.

Over here, schools are now directed to remove all social distancing, special cleaning, face masks are not permitted and pupils are not allowed to self-isolate either, they must still attend schools. Parents who are concerned about their children's safety, and hold them back from school for any reason, now face prosecution and heavy fines.

The government appear to be suppressing all talk about Covid and acting as if it was never happening. Teachers are not at all happy about the situation either, and rightly so.

The scientists on the other hand, I understand, are saying that they think that we will need to have a hard lockdown during the school half-term if the number of hospital admissions and deaths continues to rise. 

[Andrew_Debbie]

I would like to start a new project, number 134 on my list.

I need an old portable DMM, requirements:

1) Must have a large needle display!
2) As cheap as it can be
3) possibly still easily available on the used market
4) banana 4mm input jacks
5) easy to disassemble/hack.
6) nice to have: good old feeling
7) nice to have: not a company big writing on the front

Simpson 260, Triplett 630? any other suggestions?

EDIT: DMM and needle does not compute. thanks mansa.

Did you see the Metrix  MX2B  I linked earlier?   Seller just relisted.     This is an analog multimeter with some modern features.  It is CAT II rated to 600V  and IP 65.  New ones aren't cheap.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203596320854?hash=item2f67495056:g:PLoAAOSw9Wlg1K~0

[Specmaster]

Amazon must be really busy, my order from yesterday that got rolled over to today, despite being told that it was estimated for delivery between 4:15 and 5:15, never materialised and is now estimated for between 5:00 and 7:00pm.

I wonder if the problem is driver shortage, I know we have a shortage of HGV drivers, maybe we have the same with white van drivers as a result of Brexit?