Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

Oh they even call the carapace.. well carapace, tehy use the French again, how practical ! French has to be the easiest language to start with when learning English, seeing as so many of the words are the same or similar !

No, we find it easy because we learn Latin, where the French stole all their words from. 

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
εἰ δὲ τὸ ἄνω μόνον, μικρότερον παιδείας ἔχεις.

(I can't vouch for the correctness of the Greek - I never got that far, it's copypasta. From my schoolboy days of enforced Latin I can roughly vouch for the Latin.)

Sorry Cerebus I didn't take Latin at school, only German then later English ! 

My point exactly, why bother when you've already got all the words. You just need to learn a few declensions and conjugations and you're away.

I mean, you already know the Latin verb 'to love', it's just an ending away from modern French, you just have to learn to conjugate it:

Amo      I love
Amas    You love
Amat    He/She loves
Amamus    We love
Amatis       You (pl) love
Amant       They love

And decline it as a noun:

amatus  nominative male
amata   nominative female
amatum nominative neuter
and so on...

Very simple, mais non mon ami?

[25 CPS]

Do you guys remember THESE?



Unfortunately these ones were made in China and not the lighting factory down the road in Oakville that GE shut down.

Everyone here should have a little stash of incandescent bulbs in different wattages on hand.

[BU508A]

That is the reason why all Americans are friends here in Germany.
We affectionately call them "Amis" ("Yanks").


 

[Robert763]

I recently learned of using large spring clamps (or whatever they are called) to hold onto the thing you might be trying to solder a wire onto. mansaxel (and many others) will know exactly what's going on in the picture. mnementh, an added bonus is that I use this same clamp to hold the deadman lever on my smaller lawnmower while it warms up. I now keep one (a spring clamp, not a lawnmower, smart-ass) on my lab bench since discovering its usefulness in the art of cable making.

Credit where credit is due:
http://edcarlson.com/blog/?p=259

Yeah. If you're bent on mass production of XLRs, it does pay to make a holder from a chassis connector and clamp it to the bench.  I just stripped out two used Neutriks last night, and also did a lot of prep on my little 12-pair multicore cable; the fan-out end. It's Belden Brilliance 12-pair, not star-quad as in the link, but it is AES3 quality, which means they fixed the impedance of it. There will be pictures. Any year now.

I mostly use zip ties to tie up my miscellaneous cables and then store them in shoebox-size clear bins stacked on the shelf. Costco sells the bins for ~USD11 for a pack of four. For cables that I am liable to use more frequently, I'll use velcro. I find that I use most stored cables very infrequently and the cost and organizational benefits of zip-tying outweigh the additional time it takes me to cut them. I always have a pair of sharp flush-cut pliers handy in the lab.

I tend to use thinner PVC tape, not electric grade. Or velcro. Or, for mains longer than say 5 meters, like extension cords and three-phase; I use webbing straps with mechanical locks, so called Arno straps. I like them since they can be re-used and they're very strong; the locking mechanism easily holds 50 kilos.  Every sound company seems to have bought a custom set, and they usually don't mind losing a few. I've got a strap or two from every place I've worked with, it seems.   Minimum order is 300m  aggregate length.  The drawback is that they're pretty large, and on small cables they are too cumbersome.

I like these storage containers. I don't pay this much. The plastic doesn't break easily and they stack and also nest well. They also work well for junior's Lego sets and the 65,536 other toys he has.

https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/iris-buckle-up-storage-box%2c-12.9-quart%2c-clear%2c-4-ct.product.100374385.html

My favourite is another Swedish, very similar, product, the SmartStore.

In the UK it has to be Really Useful Boxes. Not the cheapest but littlr wasted space and they are STRONG. I can stand on one, The edges at least. They are mde from virgin HDPE and do not degrade. I have about 80 that are over 15 years old and still perfect. The only slight negative is they don't "nest" when empty but this reduces wasted space in use.

While there are many areas where personal preferences make it useless to argue over products, bulk storage solutions is not one of those. I am convinced of the superiority of the Eurobox, which leaves the exact make and style open to taste, of course.
I use them in every guise from the surprisingly good looking, dark green 400x300mm types used by greengrocers to grey ultra heavy duty industrial ones, which are virtually indestructible and still stack with the others. Small or medium ESD-safe ones with ESD foam mats cut to size can handle those IC which are not in rails, while those rails can go in the large size. The 400x300 takes paper in binders. The smaller two sizes are fine for materials kept available for use, while the large size lends itself best to transportation and storage of bulky matter.
The sizes are 600x400, 400x300 and 300x200. This allows two of the smaller to be stacked sideways on a larger one.
They are available in ESD-protected, food grade, transparent and more versions and also with various lid types, and they are still one compatible system. And that is what makes them superior over proprietary solutions.

Two things against Euroboxes:
Loose lids
Open holes for handles.
The handles are a killer for me, Allows small parts to get out and dust  / critters to get in. They are fine for manufacturing and transport, not so much long term storage.

[med6753]

Reason #24789 why I hate people.

I always do my laundry at 0300 or 0400 in the morning so I don't have to compete for the single washer/dryer in our complex. It's not unusual for me to find either the washer or dryer full of someone else's laundry that they were too lazy to remove and leave overnight. It gets removed and thrown on top of the machines. Too freaking bad if they don't like it. Take care of it on a timely basis. It ain't hard.

Anyway, do laundry this morning. Both machines were empty. Just pulled my clothes out of the dryer and all my t-shirts have multiple stains. The reason? Some jackass left a chap stick in the dryer. Yep, part of that is on me for not looking in the dryer. But a chap stick would be easy to miss. And I missed it. So now I'm re-washing the t-shirts after applying a stain remover. But I have a suspicion it's not going to work. And I will air dry the t-shirts. Not going back into the dryer.

And people wonder why I'm a grouchy old bastard. 

Ouch!

I was caught by a similar problem once.  If I could find the previous user of the washer, I would put him in the machine for a cycle ... or more ...

Previous user of the clothes washer was probably a mechanic with heavy dirty grease globs all over the clothes.  I used the machine for white office shirts.  Afterwards, there was no sense in trying to wash them again.  All my shirts went into the rag pile; then I had to go shopping.  Did I say that I hate shopping?  I hate shopping more than people; the only interesting part is the optimization problem to see how quickly I can get out liberated from the store.

I spoke with the laundromat owner, who pointed out the sign they are not responsible, but that they also knew of the problem and did not care to clean out the machine or even to tell me.
They lost a regular customer that day.

Ouch is right. And totally sucks that you had to buy new shirts. Yes, going shopping in a Mall or similar is on my hate list too. 

Anyway, got lucky. All the stains came out. 

[med6753]

Oh they even call the carapace.. well carapace, tehy use the French again, how practical ! French has to be the easiest language to start with when learning English, seeing as so many of the words are the same or similar !

No, we find it easy because we learn Latin, where the French stole all their words from. 

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
εἰ δὲ τὸ ἄνω μόνον, μικρότερον παιδείας ἔχεις.

(I can't vouch for the correctness of the Greek - I never got that far, it's copypasta. From my schoolboy days of enforced Latin I can roughly vouch for the Latin.)

Sorry Cerebus I didn't take Latin at school, only German then later English ! 
I know, I know... I am a disappointment again....  I wish I were smarter so I could have a conversation but well, it's not like there were a million frogs on TEA so you will have to make do with the one you got on hand sorry ! 

They stuck me in the Latin class at school. It took me two whole lessons to escape to the German class. (Everybody learned French, for varying definitions of "learned")

Took 2 years of Latin in HS too. Never got fluent in it and naturally if you don't use it you forget it. But it has assisted me to this day with vocabulary.

[med6753]

The framing is complete and casters installed on the plug-in cart. Tomorrow install the plywood covering and sanding. Then stain and poly.

[Cerebus]

They stuck me in the Latin class at school. It took me two whole lessons to escape to the German class. (Everybody learned French, for varying definitions of "learned")

My grammar school was streamed on Latin. Everybody did Latin in the first year, then in the second year we were broken up into 2L (smartest, forced to do Latin), 2A (average, no Latin), 2α ('less gifted', no Latin). When the L stream was doing Latin, everybody else was doing Biology. I got myself transferred to 2A in short order after one term of deliberately making a hash of my Latin classes. We too had French across all streams.

In the 3rd year we had an elective choice between Greek with Latin, German, and Biology across all three classes - one of the dumbest choices ever, the proto-linguists had to choose between languages, the proto-scientists had to cut themselves off from German (still at the time the native language of much industrial chemistry) or the proto-biologists had to cut themselves off from the language (Latin) that the whole Linean naming system was based on. We also had in the same year a binary choice between Art or 'Woodwork and metalwork' - that's any budding sculptors or architects buggered then. This all made perfect sense to our classicist headmaster and no sense to everybody else.

[Cerebus]

in the German part of the bay of evil,
there is a DMM from a company, which I've never heard of:
Wagner from Berlin (NAWTS)

https://www.ebay.de/itm/164788811370



As a bonus: the seller has added a picture of himself, wearing Bavarian lether trousers!
I'm pretty sure, this is a clear indicator for a trustful seller. 

Well, at least he'd probably buy you a Maß if you went to collect in person! 

[Vince]

Oh they even call the carapace.. well carapace, tehy use the French again, how practical ! French has to be the easiest language to start with when learning English, seeing as so many of the words are the same or similar !

No, we find it easy because we learn Latin, where the French stole all their words from. 

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
εἰ δὲ τὸ ἄνω μόνον, μικρότερον παιδείας ἔχεις.

(I can't vouch for the correctness of the Greek - I never got that far, it's copypasta. From my schoolboy days of enforced Latin I can roughly vouch for the Latin.)

Sorry Cerebus I didn't take Latin at school, only German then later English ! 

My point exactly, why bother when you've already got all the words. You just need to learn a few declensions and conjugations and you're away.

I mean, you already know the Latin verb 'to love', it's just an ending away from modern French, you just have to learn to conjugate it:

Amo      I love
Amas    You love
Amat    He/She loves
Amamus    We love
Amatis       You (pl) love
Amant       They love

And decline it as a noun:

amatus  nominative male
amata   nominative female
amatum nominative neuter
and so on...

Very simple, mais non mon ami?[/i]

Simple uh .... hmm... if you say so  ?!   

 

[Neomys Sapiens]

I recently learned of using large spring clamps (or whatever they are called) to hold onto the thing you might be trying to solder a wire onto. mansaxel (and many others) will know exactly what's going on in the picture. mnementh, an added bonus is that I use this same clamp to hold the deadman lever on my smaller lawnmower while it warms up. I now keep one (a spring clamp, not a lawnmower, smart-ass) on my lab bench since discovering its usefulness in the art of cable making.

Credit where credit is due:
http://edcarlson.com/blog/?p=259

Yeah. If you're bent on mass production of XLRs, it does pay to make a holder from a chassis connector and clamp it to the bench.  I just stripped out two used Neutriks last night, and also did a lot of prep on my little 12-pair multicore cable; the fan-out end. It's Belden Brilliance 12-pair, not star-quad as in the link, but it is AES3 quality, which means they fixed the impedance of it. There will be pictures. Any year now.

I mostly use zip ties to tie up my miscellaneous cables and then store them in shoebox-size clear bins stacked on the shelf. Costco sells the bins for ~USD11 for a pack of four. For cables that I am liable to use more frequently, I'll use velcro. I find that I use most stored cables very infrequently and the cost and organizational benefits of zip-tying outweigh the additional time it takes me to cut them. I always have a pair of sharp flush-cut pliers handy in the lab.

I tend to use thinner PVC tape, not electric grade. Or velcro. Or, for mains longer than say 5 meters, like extension cords and three-phase; I use webbing straps with mechanical locks, so called Arno straps. I like them since they can be re-used and they're very strong; the locking mechanism easily holds 50 kilos.  Every sound company seems to have bought a custom set, and they usually don't mind losing a few. I've got a strap or two from every place I've worked with, it seems.   Minimum order is 300m  aggregate length.  The drawback is that they're pretty large, and on small cables they are too cumbersome.

I like these storage containers. I don't pay this much. The plastic doesn't break easily and they stack and also nest well. They also work well for junior's Lego sets and the 65,536 other toys he has.

https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/iris-buckle-up-storage-box%2c-12.9-quart%2c-clear%2c-4-ct.product.100374385.html

My favourite is another Swedish, very similar, product, the SmartStore.

In the UK it has to be Really Useful Boxes. Not the cheapest but littlr wasted space and they are STRONG. I can stand on one, The edges at least. They are mde from virgin HDPE and do not degrade. I have about 80 that are over 15 years old and still perfect. The only slight negative is they don't "nest" when empty but this reduces wasted space in use.

While there are many areas where personal preferences make it useless to argue over products, bulk storage solutions is not one of those. I am convinced of the superiority of the Eurobox, which leaves the exact make and style open to taste, of course.
I use them in every guise from the surprisingly good looking, dark green 400x300mm types used by greengrocers to grey ultra heavy duty industrial ones, which are virtually indestructible and still stack with the others. Small or medium ESD-safe ones with ESD foam mats cut to size can handle those IC which are not in rails, while those rails can go in the large size. The 400x300 takes paper in binders. The smaller two sizes are fine for materials kept available for use, while the large size lends itself best to transportation and storage of bulky matter.
The sizes are 600x400, 400x300 and 300x200. This allows two of the smaller to be stacked sideways on a larger one.
They are available in ESD-protected, food grade, transparent and more versions and also with various lid types, and they are still one compatible system. And that is what makes them superior over proprietary solutions.

Two things against Euroboxes:
Loose lids
Open holes for handles.
The handles are a killer for me, Allows small parts to get out and dust  / critters to get in. They are fine for manufacturing and transport, not so much long term storage.

Here you get a lot of variants without open handles. Also lids of various types.

[Cerebus]

Here you get a lot of variants without open handles. Also lids of various types.

I was about to say the same. I mean, logically the food safe ones wouldn't come with built in rat holes.

[Vince]

Just could not help : I sticked the TV coax adapter in the vice and took the hack saw to it... made two slits to begin with. No joy, still too stiff. 2 more slits then... that's 4 now.
Oh, it can go into the socket now, victory ! Requires some force and won't go 100% in, but almost. Good enough to get a signal on the scope ! Once you stop wiggling the adapter, the signal is pretty stable on the scope. Here testing at Fmax, 50MHz... and look at that beautiful, clean sine wave ! Not to mention signal amplitude, I get the full 100mV RMS that are dialed in, even though I got 30% less than that the other day when I was looking at the signal just by shoving my scope probe into the socket.  30% down was still within spec so I was happy.. but now I get 100% , no loss at all, so I am over the moon ! 

So it's definitely much better than before, so very happy I am. If I can find a better adapter with slits and softer metal, that will make a better contact, I am all for it. But for now my hack sawed  cheap adapter is good enough for me, problem solved for now, I say.

I would have made a close-up picture of the screen to prove I am not lying about frequency and signal amplitude. Sadly just before doing that, I tried fiddling with the adapter to see if I could shove it in a bit more to make sure the trace does not go unstable right as I am trying to photograph it and... as I was grabbing the adapter, I got ZAPPED !!! Yes this generator tried to kill me !!! 
So no close-up picture for you sorry... instead I immediately pulled the plug !

Checked with the DMM for resistance between the two line terminals in the power socket, and chassis/enclosure.... no short, got 5Mohms and slowly climbing.

So I am not touching this generator for now ! 

Think I will retrofit an IEC power socket hidden at the back (to not ruin the looks of the face plate), and get myself a life saving earth connection....

Will look at the schematic of the generator to see if there is maybe some failing cap that could explain the mishap...

[McBryce]

some colored isolation electric tape costs sooo much less. mark end and begin, done.
Running out of colors? Just use "n" multiple colors.

Better solution:


Electric tape can become sticky and ugly over time.

Nice Bunte Bänder. ("bunt" in Swedish means "neat bundle" and cable ties are called "buntband". This is a bilingual Flachwitz very few people grok.)

Best solution:




I've got them in smaller size, suitable for microphone cable. They are solely responsible for teaching me resistor colour code.

But then they're bunte Buntbänder: Colourful neat bundles

McBryce.

[Specmaster]

Just could not help : I sticked the TV coax adapter in the vice and took the hack saw to it... made two slits to begin with. No joy, still too stiff. 2 more slits then... that's 4 now.
OH, it Can go into the socket now, victory ! Requires some force and won't go 100% in, but almost. Good enough to get a signal on the scope ! Once you stop wigglinh the adpater, the signal is pretty stable on the scope. Here testing at Fmax, 50MHz... and look at that beautiful, clean sine wave ! Not to mention signal amplitude, I get the full 100mV RMS that are dialed in, even though I got 30% less than that the other day when I was looking at the signal just by shoving my scope probe into the socket.  30% down was still within spec so I was happy.. but now I get 100% , no loss at all, so I am over the moon ! 

So it's definitely much better than before, so very happy I am. If I can find a better adapter with slits and softer metal, that will make a better contact, I am all for it. But for now my hack sawed  cheap adapter is good enough for me, problem solved for now, I say.

I would have made a close up picture of the screen to prove I am not lying about frequency and signal amplitude. Sadly just before doing that, I tried fiddling with the adapter to see if I could shove it in a bit more to make sure the trace does not go unstable right as I am trying to photograph it and... as I was grabbing the adapter, I got ZAPPED !!! Yes this generato tried to kill me !!! 
So no close up picture for you sorry... instead I immediately pulled the plugged !

Checked with the DMM for resistance between the two line terminal in the power socket, and chassis/enclosure.... no short, got 5Mohms and slowly climbing.

So I am not touching this generator for now ! 

Think I will retrofit an IEC power socket hidden at the back (to not ruin the looks of the face plate), and get myself a life saving earth connection....

Will look at the schematic of the generator to see if there is maybe some failing cap that could explain the mishap...

Wow, I'm really struggling here to understand just why you are having so much aggro with that output socket, its looks to be a standard coax socket but with a non-standard method of attaching it to the signal generator, Therefore the BNC to coax male plug adapter should have just pushed directly into the socket. Do you have any vernier calipers that you can measure the internal diameter of the generator's socket and check it against the external dia of the coax adapter?

Looking at the photo of the adapter plugged in, it looks perfectly normal and will not go in any further than it currently does. This is one of the reasons why I swapped out those sockets before on my own signal generators for the BNC ones that I mentioned before, as they are so much more precisely made and as a result far more satisfactory in use.

Here's is a suggestion in order to preserve the appearance, why not mount a rear mounted BNC socket, like you are going to do with the mains inlet IEC socket to stop it trying to kill you, that you will eliminate the zapping of you with the provision of a earth connection and a better signal output connection and just leave the mains front mounted input socket and the coax socket in situ but disconnected?? But like I said, that is only a suggestion.

EDIT:
The reason for it not going in further is more likely because the pin on the adapter, is already hitting the solid section of the split tube of the socket on the generator, as I said above, the photo looks perfectly normal to me  when using these adapters, and just like using adapters on mains sockets, they do greatly increase the leverage on the connections and risk damaging them, again I did try to explain this to you before. 

[Andrew_Debbie]

in the German part of the bay of evil,
there is a DMM from a company, which I've never heard of:
Wagner from Berlin (NAWTS)

https://www.ebay.de/itm/164788811370



As a bonus: the seller has added a picture of himself, wearing Bavarian lether trousers!
I'm pretty sure, this is a clear indicator for a trustful seller. 

That almost looks homemade.  (The DMM, not the Lederhosen)

[mansaxel]

While there are many areas where personal preferences make it useless to argue over products, bulk storage solutions is not one of those. I am convinced of the superiority of the Eurobox, which leaves the exact make and style open to taste, of course.

I have been ogling them repeatedly. I believe, like you that they are superior. I will migrate my storage solution to Euroboxen Any Year Now. 

Also, Euroboxen are Euro pallet compatible, which is good for me who has pallets in the garage.

[mansaxel]

I was going to tell you to revisit that, but they just have some colors out of order. Still... they should know better.

I did consider that, but I thought "aw, feckit, the never were in order in the workshop either". My OCD is obviously not as bad as I thought.

[WastelandTek]

finally came

[ch_scr]

finally came

(Attachment Link)

New toy day, oh joy!   

[Vince]

Wow, I'm really struggling here to understand just why you are having so much aggro with that output socket, its looks to be a standard coax socket but with a non-standard method of attaching it to the signal generator, Therefore the BNC to coax male plug adapter should have just pushed directly into the socket. Do you have any vernier calipers that you can measure the internal diameter of the generator's socket and check it against the external dia of the coax adapter?

Looking at the photo of the adapter plugged in, it looks perfectly normal and will not go in any further than it currently does. This is one of the reasons why I swapped out those sockets before on my own signal generators for the BNC ones that I mentioned before, as they are so much more precisely made and as a result far more satisfactory in use.

Here's is a suggestion in order to preserve the appearance, why not mount a rear mounted BNC socket, like you are going to do with the mains inlet IEC socket to stop it trying to kill you, that you will eliminate the zapping of you with the provision of a earth connection and a better signal output connection and just leave the mains front mounted input socket and the coax socket in situ but disconnected?? But like I said, that is only a suggestion.

EDIT:
The reason for it not going in further is more likely because the pin on the adapter, is already hitting the solid section of the split tube of the socket on the generator, as I said above, the photo looks perfectly normal to me  when using these adapters, and just like using adapters on mains sockets, they do greatly increase the leverage on the connections and risk damaging them, again I did try to explain this to you before. 

Yes I too would like to know why all the gods of connectors are against me ! It's not fun ! 

A BNC at the back  hmmm no, I would not go that far. Would not be practical and look weird to see a coax cable coming from there back to the front..... at that point, I think I would rather much give up General Lee and stick a BNC at the front. I have to draw the line somewhere ! 

Yes calipers I have ! Real ones with vernier not that modern digical rubbish !! 

No wonder why the adapter won't fit the socket : it's not even the SAME size.. no, it's actually BIGGER, and not by a little bit ! 

Socket on the generator is a split hair smaller than 9mm. A very thin hair, so let's say it is 9mm.

The adapter however is 9.5mm !!!! 

No wonder it's hard to shove into the socket even with 4 slits cut into it !

So I don't know... maybe the adapters are crap and can't stick to decent tolerances... unfortunately it was hard enough to find this one, so it's not like I had the choice of getting another one from another manufacturer...

Either that, or... the old socket simply is not a Belling Lee, just something damn close to it, but not quite.  The parts list in the service manual omits talking about the connectors of any kind, so I can't know for sure what it is.... Belling Lee for sure was a decent attempt, but might not be it after all...

[mansaxel]

Maybe, maybe not. Yokogawa most probably contributed to the design at the very least, they did make some gear themselves using HP's 'design language'. There are even a few Yokogawa bits of gear floating around that have no HP branding but look decidedly HP-ish. I wouldn't doubt some cross-pollination was going on in both directions.

The [hp] 974A multimeter some of us have got is a good example; there is some evidence that it was initially a Yokogawa product that got rebranded the other way.  A very good product, I might add.

[tggzzz]

They stuck me in the Latin class at school. It took me two whole lessons to escape to the German class. (Everybody learned French, for varying definitions of "learned")

My grammar school was streamed on Latin. Everybody did Latin in the first year, then in the second year we were broken up into 2L (smartest, forced to do Latin), 2A (average, no Latin), 2α ('less gifted', no Latin). When the L stream was doing Latin, everybody else was doing Biology. I got myself transferred to 2A in short order after one term of deliberately making a hash of my Latin classes. We too had French across all streams.

In the 3rd year we had an elective choice between Greek with Latin, German, and Biology across all three classes - one of the dumbest choices ever, the proto-linguists had to choose between languages, the proto-scientists had to cut themselves off from German (still at the time the native language of much industrial chemistry) or the proto-biologists had to cut themselves off from the language (Latin) that the whole Linean naming system was based on. We also had in the same year a binary choice between Art or 'Woodwork and metalwork' - that's any budding sculptors or architects buggered then. This all made perfect sense to our classicist headmaster and no sense to everybody else.

Tee hee. Pretty similar in my grammar school.

1st year: French. Choice between woodwork and metalwork/
2nd year: Latin for the top stream, German for the next, technical drawing for the dullards.
4th year: can drop subjects, in my case history, art, and metalwork. 4th year: everybody took English Literature and Maths O-Levels a year early on the principle they were essential and you could also have a go in the 5th year if necessary. Maths included calculus of polynomials except 1/x, which modern teachers can't believe.
For me, 5th form was Additional Maths, so 10 O-Levels in total.
For me 6th form was Pure Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Applied Maths A-levels - with Pure+Applied Maths taken at the end of the first year to look good on university applications. Yes, I have 5 full A-levels, something that is inconceivable nowadays.

My father was a Chemical Engineer, so he understood the usefulness of German but never suggested I swap to doing it.

[GreyWoolfe]

Better Be Right Or Your Great Big Venture Goes Wrong.

mnem
 

Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well. 

[Specmaster]

Wow, I'm really struggling here to understand just why you are having so much aggro with that output socket, its looks to be a standard coax socket but with a non-standard method of attaching it to the signal generator, Therefore the BNC to coax male plug adapter should have just pushed directly into the socket. Do you have any vernier calipers that you can measure the internal diameter of the generator's socket and check it against the external dia of the coax adapter?

Looking at the photo of the adapter plugged in, it looks perfectly normal and will not go in any further than it currently does. This is one of the reasons why I swapped out those sockets before on my own signal generators for the BNC ones that I mentioned before, as they are so much more precisely made and as a result far more satisfactory in use.

Here's is a suggestion in order to preserve the appearance, why not mount a rear mounted BNC socket, like you are going to do with the mains inlet IEC socket to stop it trying to kill you, that you will eliminate the zapping of you with the provision of a earth connection and a better signal output connection and just leave the mains front mounted input socket and the coax socket in situ but disconnected?? But like I said, that is only a suggestion.

EDIT:
The reason for it not going in further is more likely because the pin on the adapter, is already hitting the solid section of the split tube of the socket on the generator, as I said above, the photo looks perfectly normal to me  when using these adapters, and just like using adapters on mains sockets, they do greatly increase the leverage on the connections and risk damaging them, again I did try to explain this to you before. 

Yes I too would like to know why all the gods of connectors are against me ! It's not fun ! 

A BNC at the back  hmmm no, I would not go that far. Would not be practical and look weird to see a coax cable coming from there back to the front..... at that point, I think I would rather much give up General Lee and stick a BNC at the front. I have to draw the line somewhere ! 

Yes calipers I have ! Real ones with vernier not that modern digical rubbish !! 

No wonder why the adapter won't fit the socket : it's not even the SAME size.. no, it's actually BIGGER, and not by a little bit ! 

Socket on the generator is a split hair smaller than 9mm. A very thin hair, so let's say it is 9mm.

The adapter however is 9.5mm !!!! 

No wonder it's hard to shove into the socket even with 4 slits cut into it !

So I don't know... maybe the adapters are crap and can't stick to decent tolerances... unfortunately it was hard enough to find this one, so it's not like I had the choice of getting another one from another manufacturer...

Either that, or... the old socket simply is not a Belling Lee, just something damn close to it, but not quite.  The parts list in the service manual omits talking about the connectors of any kind, so I can't know for sure what it is.... Belling Lee for sure was a decent attempt, but might not be it after all...

Well, Belling-Lee is not the only maker of those plugs and sockets, I'm sure there are many others also, but .5mm is not that bad really and it might well be within tolerances and is purposefully a tight fit to try and reduce any extra force being exerted onto the centre socket tube and bending it away from the male pin, thus compromising its connection in the event of the cable getting tugged etc and exerting a side wise force on it?  Remember, it wasn't just me who was trying to warn you about the inherent problems of that particular interface. 

As to having a coax or a screened cable, coming from the back of it, is that so bad? After all, you are talking about putting a IEC socket there to stop it from zapping you, I doubt that you would be able to mount it in the front where the old 2 pin socket is located  Any way, its over to you, its yours, and you will have to live with what ever solution you come up with, I know what I would do and some have already endorsed it, but you don't like it and that is your prerogative.  

EDIT:
Why don't you try pushing one of these adapters you have into the antenna socket on that TV you have been given and see if it fits as tightly in that?