Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Saskia]

Xilinx Adapt virtual conference is on.
Long evenings for me as it is in Pacific time.

[Robert763]

What I'm really looking for is a supply of adaptors for 4 mm male to 4 mm female bananas and forks to 4 mm female bananas so that I can use standard safety shrouded test leads on other meters that cannot be retrofitted with safety sockets.

Any ideas, eBay has given me a supplier of 4 mm male to female adaptors, so its the fork to female that seems to rather hard to locate.

I have those and they work well. But oddly they state 30V just like the ones you pictured. 

Yep, I already have some of the male to female one and they say 30V but I've used them on 250V with no issues, maybe that could be the makers name or something? Have you got some of the fork to females ones?

Because they are non-shrouded they are not "safe" to use on hazardous voltage. Obviously th OEM sets hazardous at 30V some say 50V.

[Specmaster]

What I'm really looking for is a supply of adaptors for 4 mm male to 4 mm female bananas and forks to 4 mm female bananas so that I can use standard safety shrouded test leads on other meters that cannot be retrofitted with safety sockets.

Any ideas, eBay has given me a supplier of 4 mm male to female adaptors, so its the fork to female that seems to rather hard to locate.

I have those and they work well. But oddly they state 30V just like the ones you pictured. 

Yep, I already have some of the male to female one and they say 30V but I've used them on 250V with no issues, maybe that could be the makers name or something? Have you got some of the fork to females ones?

Because they are non-shrouded they are not "safe" to use on hazardous voltage. Obviously th OEM sets hazardous at 30V some say 50V.

That explains the 30V then, thanks

[Specmaster]

Many thanks to those who assisted with the adaptors, I have now located them all from the same location, Aliexpress and ordered, 7.2mm fork to 4mm female, 4mm male to 4mm female, 4mm test probes and some solder hole cleaning rods that can also double up as desoldering nozzle unblockers.

[Cerebus]

Oh brother, here we go.  I think I'll go over to Home Depot and lick a dozen drywall knives. 

Can you pick me up a couple of pints of paint stripper and methanol while you're there?

Oh, and a bag of ice from the bodega?

I think I'm probably going to need a stiff drink. 

[Cerebus]

Because they are non-shrouded they are not "safe" to use on hazardous voltage. Obviously th OEM sets hazardous at 30V some say 50V.

I think the 30V is derived from IEC-long-number-beginning-in-6-that-I-can't-remember that is essentially "electrical safety for laboratory instruments".

[AVGresponding]

Anybody in need of some Tesla MAA723 = µA723?

2x 50 pieces of them are available here (NAWTS):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133871141980

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133871142254

Ooof, proper bargain in prospect there. I'd have one of the lots myself if it doesn't go past €20+ shipping...

[AVGresponding]

Tek plugin pile arrived. Grubby with added spidery goodness but as described. Very little corrosion and the important one is in pretty good condition.

If no creepy crawlies came out it's all downhill. 

Oh they came out but they were spiders and they were thoroughly dessicated!

It's fairly likely that those are spider skins, rather than desiccated spiders; shedding the exoskeleton is a common way for invertebrates to grow.

[mnementh]

The sticker in the previous post, warning of potential cancer and reproductive harm, was on a FUCKING DRYWALL KNIFE. What the hell are Californians doing with drywall mudding tools that gives them cancer and causes reproductive harm?  Using the handle as a sex toy?  Scraping the rubberized coating off and brewing toxic tea?  There’s such a thing as going too far with ridiculous warnings, and I think this more than qualifies.  At this rate, they should just make a list of stuff that DOESN'T cause cancer on the left coast - it would probably have less than a dozen things on it.



 

-Pat

(Edit to add - I'm on the east coast in Connecticut, so it won’t cause me to get cancer or suffer reproductive harm)

High levels of chrome in the SS blade, the production of which supposedly creates hexavalent chromium which can still be present on the product after purchase. All chromed steel and non-food-grade SS products are required to carry this warning if they might be shipped to CA.

So no, being in Conn does not protect you from this, nor does it make the danger any less real... the only difference is that the governing body of CA has recognized this danger and is taking steps to warn the population.

Which would become abundantly clear if you had just arsed yourself to go to the URL so prominently placed on the sticker you are ridiculing. 

Cheers,

mnem
If you think the EPA is the problem, then you are part of the problem.

Oh brother, here we go.  I think I'll go over to Home Depot and lick a dozen drywall knives. 

Here we go what...?

Maybe if you bothered to go read what they're warning you aboot, you might understand what they're warning you aboot. Jeebus... I wondered aboot that warning on something I got off Amazon a few months ago, so rather than just assume they're idiots, I checked out the link on the sticker.

We westerners make a lot of really stupid assumptions. Like we assume that because we know how something is/was produced here in the US back in the day, that a similar product now made in the toxic waste dump/slave labor regions of Asia will be produced with similar level of care to eliminate chemical exposure to the worker and the customer and will be delivered in similarly benign condition to that we feel we are familiar with.

This is a really stupid assumption to make.

Especially in this current political-economic climate of deregulating anything that costs the corporation money.

mnem
 

[capt bullshot]

What I'm really looking for is a supply of adaptors for 4 mm male to 4 mm female bananas and forks to 4 mm female bananas so that I can use standard safety shrouded test leads on other meters that cannot be retrofitted with safety sockets.

Any ideas, eBay has given me a supplier of 4 mm male to female adaptors, so its the fork to female that seems to rather hard to locate.

Homebrew:



The rings or forks are standard stranded wire terminations that match by chance the outer diameter of these nice tubes that have 4mm inner diameter. Don't ask me where to buy these, I found them lingering around in a long time forgotten box at work. Might be extra long crimp ferrules for 10mm² wires?

[Cubdriver]

The sticker in the previous post, warning of potential cancer and reproductive harm, was on a FUCKING DRYWALL KNIFE. What the hell are Californians doing with drywall mudding tools that gives them cancer and causes reproductive harm?  Using the handle as a sex toy?  Scraping the rubberized coating off and brewing toxic tea?  There’s such a thing as going too far with ridiculous warnings, and I think this more than qualifies.  At this rate, they should just make a list of stuff that DOESN'T cause cancer on the left coast - it would probably have less than a dozen things on it.



 

-Pat

(Edit to add - I'm on the east coast in Connecticut, so it won’t cause me to get cancer or suffer reproductive harm)

High levels of chrome in the SS blade, the production of which supposedly creates hexavalent chromium which can still be present on the product after purchase. All chromed steel and non-food-grade SS products are required to carry this warning if they might be shipped to CA.

So no, being in Conn does not protect you from this, nor does it make the danger any less real... the only difference is that the governing body of CA has recognized this danger and is taking steps to warn the population.

Which would become abundantly clear if you had just arsed yourself to go to the URL so prominently placed on the sticker you are ridiculing. 

Cheers,

mnem
If you think the EPA is the problem, then you are part of the problem.

My emphasis above added in red.  So, what exactly is the danger from these things that can supposedly be created, and that CAN still be present on a drywall knife after manufacture?

https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/hexavalent_chromium.pdf

From the above link:
How hexavalent chromium can harm employees
Workplace exposure to hexavalent chromium
may cause the following health effects:
• lung cancer in workers who breathe airborne
hexavalent chromium
• irritation or damage to the nose, throat, and
lung (respiratory tract) if hexavalent chromium
is breathed at high levels
• irritation or damage to the eyes and skin if
hexavalent chromium contacts these organs in
high concentrations.

How employees can be exposed to
hexavalent chromium
Employees can inhale airborne hexavalent
chromium as a dust, fume or mist while:
• producing chromate pigments and powders;
chromic acid; chromium catalysts, dyes, and
coatings
• working near chrome electoplating
• welding and hotworking stainless steel, high
chrome alloys and chrome-coated metal
• applying and removing chromate-containing
paints and other surface coatings.
Skin exposure can occur during direct handling
of hexavalent chromium-containing solutions,
coatings, and cements.

The new OSHA workplace standard requires
employers to:
• limit eight-hour time-weighted average hexavalent chromium exposure in the workplace to
5 micrograms or less per cubic meter of air.
• perform periodic monitoring at least every 6
months if initial monitoring shows employee
exposure at or above the action level (2.5
micrograms per cubic meter of air calculated
as an 8-hour time-weighted average).

Seriously, dude - exactly how much hexavalent chromium residue do you think could possibly remain on that blade?  How real IS the 'danger'?  A blade that's going to be dipped in mud that will be smeared on the wall, then washed off.  Can even a single instance, anywhere, any time, be found of a person who developed CANCER or suffered birth defects due to hexavalent chromium exposure from a fucking DRYWALL KNIFE?!?  Sorry, I STILL think that that warning is utterly overblown and ridiculous.  Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?  There's such a thing as going too far with warnings.  That OSHA PDF is for people who work directly with the stuff in its raw form - how many orders of magnitude less is any risk when it comes to something that's chemically bound into the metallurgy of the finished product?

-Pat

[xrunner]

So I thought I'd make some progress on my GPSDO message decoding and display. I got a little MAX232 board to interface to the RS232 cable. Sounds simple enough right?

 

Well I wired it up for a test and just got a really crappy signal out of it. Signal out looked great at the GPSDO box. Looked like a badly compensated probe trying to pass a square wave out of the MAX232. Played around with everything, asked myself if I was smart enough to be tasked with this (I eventually told myself I was  ), but nothing I did made the signal any cleaner.

So I unplugged the cable and inspected the female RS-232 DB9.

THERE ARE NO METAL CONTACTS IN THE HOLE OF PIN 5 (GROUND) OF THE FEMALE DB9 ON THE BOARD. NONE. ZIPPO.

 

Or pin 4 for that matter (which I don't need). Bypass around it and signal looks good (0 to +5 V square wave).

Typing up a nastygram to the Ebay seller ...

[bd139]

Hahaha that’s terrible. Even for china 

[mnementh]

...Seriously, dude - exactly how much hexavalent chromium residue do you think could possibly remain on that blade?  How real IS the 'danger' ?

-Pat

Enough that it is reasonable to warn people.

When you're planning on warning people, you have to also consider cumulative exposure when you don't know how much exposure a person may already have. Any exposure matters, especially with these kinds of chemicals. Their testing revealed there was enough that it could contribute to a person's total exposure. So they are warning people.

I would rather too much warning than business as usual. Business as usual always benefits business, not people.

Just how much hexavalent chromium exposure have you had in your lifetime already? Do you have even a clue...? Yeah, me neither.    

And remember, just because one regulatory body says x level of exposure is safe, does not make it so, or that those numbers even match what another regulatory body says.

OSHA in particular has a long, documented history of being swayed towards the interests of large corporate interests, so even that "standard" for exposure is by it's nature suspect.

Stainless steel is now known to not be the benign, inert everywhere material we once assumed it to be. Just because you've thought it was all your life doesn't make it so; things change.

mnem
The only constant is change. Adapt or die.

[mnementh]

Tek plugin pile arrived. Grubby with added spidery goodness but as described. Very little corrosion and the important one is in pretty good condition.

If no creepy crawlies came out it's all downhill. 

Oh they came out but they were spiders and they were thoroughly dessicated!

It's fairly likely that those are spider skins, rather than desiccated spiders; shedding the exoskeleton is a common way for invertebrates to grow.

Doesn't make them any less creepy as all fuck. 

mnem

[Specmaster]

...Seriously, dude - exactly how much hexavalent chromium residue do you think could possibly remain on that blade?  How real IS the 'danger' ?

-Pat

Enough that it is reasonable to warn people.

When you're planning on warning people, you have to also consider cumulative exposure when you don't know how much exposure a person may already have. Any exposure matters, especially with these kinds of chemicals. Their testing revealed there was enough that it could contribute to a person's total exposure. So they are warning people.

I would rather too much warning than business as usual. Business as usual always benefits business, not people.

Just how much hexavalent chromium exposure have you had in your lifetime already? Do you have even a clue...? Yeah, me neither.    

And remember, just because one regulatory body says x level of exposure is safe, does not make it so, or that those numbers even match what another regulatory body says.

OSHA in particular has a long, documented history of being swayed towards the interests of large corporate interests, so even that "standard" for exposure is by it's nature suspect.

Stainless steel is now known to not be the benign, inert everywhere material we once assumed it to be. Just because you've thought it was all your life doesn't make it so; things change.

mnem
The only constant is change. Adapt or die.

While I don't know enough about the material really comment either way on it, let me throw in a comment in general that may just start to open up a few closed minds in here to other possibilities. It was not all that long ago that we all hailed a new wonder material only to find that it was in fact a silent killer for many and even today has the power to close down buildings, that material is ASBESTOS .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos

[Cerebus]

... these nice tubes that have 4mm inner diameter. Don't ask me where to buy these, I found them lingering around in a long time forgotten box at work.

Could probably be made quite easily with a bit of 4mm id copper tube and one of those pipe flaring tools you use for hydraulic lines.

[bd139]

Oh joy I’m having Amazon problems tonight. Late delivery. I need to blow some holes in a Hammond box and can’t do it without drill bits or a centre punch  . Was hoping to do it before the kids go to sleep

[Cerebus]

Oh joy I’m having Amazon problems tonight. Late delivery. I need to blow some holes in a Hammond box and can’t do it without drill bits or a centre punch  . Was hoping to do it before the kids go to sleep

Well, there you have it "blow some holes" - improvise an MS shaped charge with some aluminium foil and, in place of explosives, a heavily reverse biased electrolytic cap.

[Saskia]

*cough* you called ?

[mnementh]

What I'm really looking for is a supply of adaptors for 4 mm male to 4 mm female bananas and forks to 4 mm female bananas so that I can use standard safety shrouded test leads on other meters that cannot be retrofitted with safety sockets.

Any ideas, eBay has given me a supplier of 4 mm male to female adaptors, so its the fork to female that seems to rather hard to locate.

Homebrew:



The rings or forks are standard stranded wire terminations that match by chance the outer diameter of these nice tubes that have 4mm inner diameter. Don't ask me where to buy these, I found them lingering around in a long time forgotten box at work. Might be extra long crimp ferrules for 10mm² wires?

They look like sleeve inserts to go inside Saran or Poly water line tubing commonly used for icemaker installation kits on refrigerators and other similar compression plumbing connections. May have come from such a hardware kit.

The purpose is to reinforce the tubing such that it makes a good compression seal, rather than allowing the outer tapered compression sleeve to turn under pressure and cut through the soft tubing which is a common failure mode.

mnem
 

[BU508A]

Anybody in need of some Tesla MAA723 = µA723?

2x 50 pieces of them are available here (NAWTS):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133871141980

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133871142254

Ooof, proper bargain in prospect there. I'd have one of the lots myself if it doesn't go past €20+ shipping...

I'm pretty sure, they will exceed the 20 EUR mark significantly.

[beanflying]

What I'm really looking for is a supply of adaptors for 4 mm male to 4 mm female bananas and forks to 4 mm female bananas so that I can use standard safety shrouded test leads on other meters that cannot be retrofitted with safety sockets.

Any ideas, eBay has given me a supplier of 4 mm male to female adaptors, so its the fork to female that seems to rather hard to locate.

Homebrew:



The rings or forks are standard stranded wire terminations that match by chance the outer diameter of these nice tubes that have 4mm inner diameter. Don't ask me where to buy these, I found them lingering around in a long time forgotten box at work. Might be extra long crimp ferrules for 10mm² wires?

Homebrew using some 4mm good quality 4mm Female bullets. Voltage rating zero tested at 1kV 

[Vince]

Just found this curious little thing here :

https://www.leboncoin.fr/equipements_industriels/2008120762.htm

An old HP little gizmo, unusual to me, in like new condition for a reasonable sum (50 Euros)... in case the HP nuts on here might be interested I can help...



An HP 403A , an " AC Transistor Voltmeter ".

I have no idea in concrete terms how you would use this thing and why you would want to use it... maybe you can teach me...

Only problem is the left side of the case has been mutilated in order to fit half a dozen connectors, but if the item is rare (?), might still be worth it as it should be easy enough to repair. I mean I assume the enclosure is made of metal so should be easy to plug the hole and respray the thing, no ?

Anyway, it caught my attention, a pristine old HP thingy for only 50 Euros over here is unheard of ! 

[Specmaster]

Those leads I got from Amazon (eventually) are now going back, all paperwork is prepared and will on their way tomorrow and I have ordered some of the following items from Aliexpress. No leads, as I have a number of those, but just require some adaptors for them to allow those to be used on older meters not designed to accept safety leads.

I wonder how long these will take to arrive from China