Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

Oh and....BTW. Fuck EV's. 

[TERRA Operative]

Well, the 334A Distortion Analyzer finally got its final turn on the bench. Was able to use the 3325A Function Gen (Now it has been freshly adjusted within an inch of its life, besides the jitter adjustment.. still haven't worked out how to do that, and also the flatness adjustment as I don't have any gear to measure it) and the 34461A multimeter along with a handful of attenuators to get it absolutely, completely spot-on.

So that's another bit of gear off the healing pile and onto the shelf of love.

I also managed to find a brand-new-in-original-plastic-wrapper 3.5" floppy disk drive, which will go into my old dual Pentium 3 CPU tower PC (An ancient Dell Precision 410) once the cables arrive in the next few days, so I can hopefully make disks for my 4145B Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer, then I'll be able to anal-ize all my semiconductors, well once I get the 4 triax cables to connect the test fixture anyway....


On a related note, does anyone have any ideas on how to re-apply white screen printing to display plastics? I got a HP 5335A Frequency Counter and a Tek PG506 Cal Generator that need the silkscreen reapplied. Both are worth a bit of effort to do so.
I'm hoping my Silhouette brand sticker cutter can cut small and accurate enough to make a stencil, but I'm not overly confident yet as the characters in the designs are rather tiny...

[Cerebus]

Anybody heard from the resident Valkyrie recently?

Just want to check that she's not lying at the bottom of some stairs somewhere, pinned to the ground by 250kg of pinball machine.

[Specmaster]

I second that hope as well. Hopefully she is just resting up a while after that Herculean effort, recharging her batteries.

Edit
I've sent her a PM.

[Kosmic]

A while ago they were discussion about the electric system and people were wondering why north America was setup with 110V and a second phase to get 220V.

Spoiler: Of course it's because of Edison

[Cerebus]

Sob! The last of those lovely Nemo roasting potatoes I'm going to get until September comes around are going in the pot tonight.

[Ice-Tea]

*cries*

[med6753]

*cries*

Damn, that took one hell of a shot. Who was the shipper?

[McBryce]

Electric trains have done tht for years as part of their main service brake system.

But only in combination with at least one other, usually two other brake systems, i.e. air and mechanical.

Besides, trains have room for such things  - noone would want a big resistor array on the roof of their motorcars - and untli a decade or two ago they already had resistors for realising a few additional 'notches' in their acceleration controllers which could then be used for rheostatic braking which, btw, has been the source of countless fires on EMUs and locomotives. Luckily, since the arrival of modern semiconductor controllers, all this is history.

Put the array on the underside, make it large and shallow, add heatsink fins and call it "underbody aerodynamic flow control and rear airflow diffuser". Problem solved, more marketing bullshit for the brochure. 

Although those underbody spoilers look like complete marketing w*nk, they do actually work... just not on the cars that they usually get put onto! With enough downforce they are pretty effective at stabilising the rear axle when accelerating ... But on a commercial boy-racer cars they are about as effective as go-faster-stripes and furry dice.

McBryce.

[Robert763]

Electric trains have done tht for years as part of their main service brake system.

But only in combination with at least one other, usually two other brake systems, i.e. air and mechanical.

Besides, trains have room for such things  - noone would want a big resistor array on the roof of their motorcars - and untli a decade or two ago they already had resistors for realising a few additional 'notches' in their acceleration controllers which could then be used for rheostatic braking which, btw, has been the source of countless fires on EMUs and locomotives. Luckily, since the arrival of modern semiconductor controllers, all this is history.

Put the array on the underside, make it large and shallow, add heatsink fins and call it "underbody aerodynamic flow control and rear airflow diffuser". Problem solved, more marketing bullshit for the brochure. 

Not even that. It would olny be used when the battery could not accept charge from the regenertion. The heat could be dumped into the cooling system.

[McBryce]

Dumping the energy into resistors or spoilers is not regeneration. The whole idea of regen is that you recuperate the energy, not dissipate it.

McBryce.

[Cerebus]

Electric trains have done tht for years as part of their main service brake system.

But only in combination with at least one other, usually two other brake systems, i.e. air and mechanical.

Besides, trains have room for such things  - noone would want a big resistor array on the roof of their motorcars - and untli a decade or two ago they already had resistors for realising a few additional 'notches' in their acceleration controllers which could then be used for rheostatic braking which, btw, has been the source of countless fires on EMUs and locomotives. Luckily, since the arrival of modern semiconductor controllers, all this is history.

Put the array on the underside, make it large and shallow, add heatsink fins and call it "underbody aerodynamic flow control and rear airflow diffuser". Problem solved, more marketing bullshit for the brochure. 

Although those underbody spoilers look like complete marketing w*nk, they do actually work... just not on the cars that they usually get put onto! With enough downforce they are pretty effective at stabilising the rear axle when accelerating ... But on a commercial boy-racer cars they are about as effective as go-faster-stripes and furry dice.

McBryce.

Oh I didn't mean to imply that diffusers (in the right circumstances) are wank, just that usefully combining a heatsink and a diffuser would give the boys in the marketing department an excuse to get the handcream out and have a little chat with Mrs. Palm and her five lovely daughters.

However, on most road vehicles that get them, one look at topography of the underbody upstream of them will tell you that they are in that case, mere decoration. On an F1 car the rear diffuser generates upward of 300kg of peak downforce, definitely not trivial.

[Cerebus]

Dumping the energy into resistors or spoilers is not regeneration. The whole idea of regen is that you recuperate the energy, not dissipate it.

McBryce.

Nobody is suggesting that, just talking around the idea of braking with the motors as much of the time as possible -  regenerating when possible, dumping energy when not. Just a thought experiment on how far one could go with electric rather than mechanical braking, saving the latter for last resort.

[tautech]

EV's     
Take it here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/renewable-energy/

[mnementh]

Seems to me the obvious solution is to use the excess EMF to charge your Flux Capacitor. 

mnem
*still only has capacitors that have not yet learned to flucc*

[Cerebus]

EV's     
Take it here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/renewable-energy/

No way! That place is full of nutters!

[factory]

*cries*

Ouch, that was expensive, did the rest of the stuff from PP survive?

David

[factory]

Electric trains have done tht for years as part of their main service brake system.

But only in combination with at least one other, usually two other brake systems, i.e. air and mechanical.

Besides, trains have room for such things  - noone would want a big resistor array on the roof of their motorcars - and untli a decade or two ago they already had resistors for realising a few additional 'notches' in their acceleration controllers which could then be used for rheostatic braking which, btw, has been the source of countless fires on EMUs and locomotives. Luckily, since the arrival of modern semiconductor controllers, all this is history.

Erm, a lot of electric multiple unit trains don't have motors on every axle anyway and discs are still fitted to the axle or wheels. And judging by the condition of said discs, from some powered powered axles, the regen or rheostatic braking isn't that good on some of the EMUs, or the overvoltage protection prevents it from working (has to be demand somewhere else on the line for it to be used).

David

[mnementh]

*cries*   

Jeebus... wha-a-a-hoppened..?

Your parcel get picked for a game of forklift feetsball, and they poked a hole in the side of the carton...?

mnem
smeesh and a half...

[mnementh]

EV's         Take it here:   https://www.eevblog.com/forum/renewable-energy/

No way! That place is full of nutters!

*runs over there quick as I can to beat the rush*   

mnem
Don't read this.

[Ice-Tea]

Carton? What carton is that? But yeah, I assume someone misjudged a forklift turn. It's not terrible, though, I mostly got that lot for the display and cables. The rest of the stuff seems to have made the trip in one piece. Some attrition is kinda expected but it's ussualy a know of foot that gets it. This is a bit more than that...

[Saskia]

Hi everybody,
still not done moving. I will have the old flat empty sometime tomorrow and will need to do at least another 1000 miles to finish this feat. it's utterly exhausting and I don't know how many tons I lugged. worse yet, I just got note that someone wants to dump 3 pinball machines at my place which is currently suffering from an onslaught of moving boxes.
I currently don't have a computer so my posting activities are down to a minimum.
please bear with me and thank you for your concern.

[mnementh]

I second that hope as well. Hopefully she is just resting up a while after that Herculean effort, recharging her batteries.

Edit
I've sent her a PM.

I fear that just like me, she isn't done yet... We just got home with the boi; having a bite to eat then back at the ToD. They're warning us that tomorrow may be a snow day at his school, so I wanna get as much as I can fit in the house before that hits.

mnem
*joy*

[factory]

We never had any of the later S-VHS machines though, no idea how much better the picture was from those.

"Barely tolerable" was my verdict.  I once did a school project, video art. It was shot on Betacam, editedmassacred in the edit suite, on Betacam and then downmixed to S-VHS for presentation. The quality on S-VHS was horrible compared to what came off the Betacam player, but still way above standard VHS.

Last year I wanted to stop the old VHS machine cluttering the place up and decided to transfer to digital anything that was left on tape that was deemed of historic value - my late brother-in-law appearing on a TV quiz show, visiting Men-An-Tol for the total solar eclipse last century, things like that, and finally get rid of the thing.

I hadn't watched analogue TV for years, let alone off a VHS tape. The difference in quality from digital SD was much more pronounced than I remembered.

A frame grab from one of those to give an idea of the quality:

That looks fine to me, apart from the obvious horizontal error showing in the podium, the picture seems to have been upscaled too.
I have stuff that needs transferring, but never seem to get round to it, plus the machines probably need a good service, lubrication & some fresh capacitors. Picture isn't going to great as none of the machines have an S-video output, which the capture device has as well as the usual composite video RCAs.

P.S. I wouldn't be at all surprized if Challenge TV have all of 15to1 digitized too.

David

[mnementh]

Carton? What carton is that? But yeah, I assume someone misjudged a forklift turn. It's not terrible, though, I mostly got that lot for the display and cables. The rest of the stuff seems to have made the trip in one piece. Some attrition is kinda expected but it's ussualy a know of foot that gets it. This is a bit more than that...

Ahhh... so this wasn't a shipment, then. 

I figured that were the culprit most likely from the look; I once received a Thermaltake computer case from Newegg which very obviously had been similarly poked with a forklift and had creases in the other side of the box.

mnem