Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[dl6lr]

I never used it with battery though. I bought a 5$ 9V 1A power supply. You just need to switch polarity since Brother put the + on the outside conductor.

I really have no idea why Brother went to the trouble of hiding the barrel jack in the printer I mentioned yesterday, but most users wouldn't even know they could cut the hole in the casing, to fit the external power pack/wall-wart to the socket that was already provided. 

I have a Brother p-Touch 310 using 6 AA cells. It has the barrel jack, but I never used it. It runs on one set of batteries for years (several tapes) so I did not bother to use a wall wart with it. Using batteries the device is more mobile, so I just replaced the battery set after some years when it was exhausted. Your mileage may vary, i.e. if you run one tape a week in a business.
For labeling cardboard boxes, envelopes etc. I have a Dymo USB thermal label printer with second source reels of labels.

[mnementh]

Marco Reps tests the Cetus 2 (3D-Printer):

Love that guy, anyway I love Marlin too. I let the Cetus be delivered and tested for all the others for two years.
To me it seems too unstable, too new technology.

The thing with Cetus... they're very expensive for the build volume. And yeah, they always bring something interesting in the hotend/extruder technology... I gotta give them credit for that... but in an age where everybody else is designing their printers to be more and more solid to eliminate artifacts, with triangulated chassis and dual Z, etc... they're doubling down on the cantilever design. ehhhhhhhh...   

Last Cetus I looked at didn't even have a heated bed available, tho they promised it would be soon. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

I have a Brother H110, has been working pretty well. Even sticked some labels outside and they are still doing great after 2 years.      I never used it with battery though. I bought a 5$ 9V 1A power supply. You just need to switch polarity since Brother put the + on the outside conductor.

Sounds like a plan, will probably do that !     I assume Brother reversed the polarity as a planned obsolescence thing, hoping people would fry their printer and buy a new one ?! 
.. this means that I don't need to ask if they added some diode to protect the electronics against reversed polarity.. of course there is no protection, that would defeat their intent ! 

Maybe I am a bad mouth... will take mine apart once I buy it on Monday, and look on the circuit board to see what they have done.. or not done.

I could also power it from my lab supply to see for myself just how much current it draws when printing, to confirm or deny that it's too much of a current for a Li-on battery to handle, hence they chose to use non-rechargeable batteries instead...

Pretty sure the reasoning behind using regular alkalines has to do with the intended market, and the fact batteries last a long time in these things. And the fact that these are the kind of stuff where every fraction of a penny per unit counts; these commodity products sell primarily based on price first, and feature-set as a afterthought.

The two groups I know of who buy these heavily are office manager drone types and IT/cabling weenies like myself. Many of my clients require that ethernet, etc patches be individually labeled as part of a rack & stack.

Office manager types are just going to get regular batteries from the supply closet, cuz the company pays for those. IT weenies are going to want whatever power source they can just grab at the checkout quick wherever they're getting their cabling & cable management supplies.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

I have 3 Brother label printers that I have purchased over the years, all 3 have their own uses, albeit I don't use them often, just like to collect things, don't we all, hence why we are TEA members 

[Saskia]

@Cerebus broken posts. There is a plastic welding shop nearby ...

[xrunner]

I have 3 Brother label printers that I have purchased over the years, all 3 have their own uses, albeit I don't use them often, just like to collect things, don't we all, hence why we are TEA members 

Yea I had one like the first one you show, but I got a little better on last year (PT-1890). It's a little better at showing what the label will look like, but not completely. Trouble with these are they don't show exactly what the label will look like. PC based system would I think. I've wasted my share of tape, fiddling with what I thought it would look like after printing. 

[McBryce]

I never used it with battery though. I bought a 5$ 9V 1A power supply. You just need to switch polarity since Brother put the + on the outside conductor.

I really have no idea why Brother went to the trouble of hiding the barrel jack in the printer I mentioned yesterday, but most users wouldn't even know they could cut the hole in the casing, to fit the external power pack/wall-wart to the socket that was already provided. 

I have a Brother p-Touch 310 using 6 AA cells. It has the barrel jack, but I never used it. It runs on one set of batteries for years (several tapes) so I did not bother to use a wall wart with it. Using batteries the device is more mobile, so I just replaced the battery set after some years when it was exhausted. Your mileage may vary, i.e. if you run one tape a week in a business.
For labeling cardboard boxes, envelopes etc. I have a Dymo USB thermal label printer with second source reels of labels.

I'm always paranoid with devices with just occassional use where the batteries last a long time. They're perfect candidates for leaking batteries that you discover after they've destroyed half of the device. I recently went looking for my "laser measuring tape" only to discover that the batteries were busy eating through the contacts and PCB.

McBryce.

[Robert763]

I have a birthday with a zero at the end this week and had lunch with the family today. Twin sister (slightly older) was there of course.
Gifts were received 
The Cheese was from Sis and brother in law as part of a Fortnum and Mason Hamper
Facom and Knipex were from my brother (he needed a clue and I'd seen both on here). I was only expecting one or the other.
R&S was from SWMBO 
I'm well fed and very happy. I might just have a beer from the hamper.

[Robert763]

On the Facom screwdriver set I did not realise until I played with it that the adjustable angle of the head locked in place. This makes it possible to apply pressue to the screwdriver bit from the handle. Most flexible head ratchets don't have this as you don't need to apply pressure to keep it on a nut.   

[m k]

You don't know what it installs.
We've lost control when MFM controller was left behind.

BTW,
Palmtronic and RAD results 1, DEG is a bit under, w/o tan() it's a bit over and w/o cos() it's 1.

BTW2,
my poor P-touch 500 doesn't even have a display.

I do because I've dumped and inspected the entire contents of the virtual drive and also connected it to a Linux machine where I can fully monitor what the USB connection is doing. It doesn't install anything.

McBryce.

They(them) will secretly inject those legit files.
And export bogus empty space.

Your disk tracks have sectors and sectors and those other sectors are reallocation zones.
So when sector is bad it is reallocated and LBA doesn't change but physical place is different.

The disk can also reallocate for what ever secret purposes it want.
It can also use unused space how ever it see fit.

So when disk is nearly full they say it has troubles but why.
Obviously because it must relocate all the spy stuff.

[tautech]

On the Facom screwdriver set I did not realise until I played with it that the adjustable angle of the head locked in place. This makes it possible to apply pressue to the screwdriver bit from the handle. Most flexible head ratchets don't have this as you don't need to apply pressure to keep it on a nut.

Most flexi head I've had do lock at various angles especially in 1/4" drive. Used to have (before workshop fire) a nice little stubby with 3/8 and 1/2", one either side of the ratchet head and it was a flexi too but the steps weren't as fine as your nice little Facom.
Oh and happy 0......they do come too regularly. 

[Vince]

Happy Birthday Rob.. you are more than lucky to have family buying you cool stuff ! Not gonna happen here for sure...


@Neper : OMG.. just came accross this ad in Frog land :

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/1967343656.htm

a NEPER-meter ?! 

Made by Ferisol an old long defunct (I think !) French manufacturer of TE. Seller says this one was for the French Air Army, and probably a custom design since he says he can't find any mention of this instrument in the period Ferisol catalogues, nor find any documentation on the thing. Not sure how true that is but at the very least it shows that there is such a thing as a NEPER-meter ! 

Never heard about a NEPER unit before... now need to go look it up I guess !
You live and learn...

[med6753]

If my quickie attempts to trace the parts is correct, the really hot part at the center of the thermal images (the temps are in degrees F) is R233, the 10k resistor just above and to the right of Q234 on the schematic.  Doesn't seem to me that it should be getting anywhere near that hot.  Anywho - the misadventure begins...

Dud D245 zener ?
Had this in older stuff before......

I think D245 is a tunnel diode - note the little wings on the symbol point the same way.  Regardless, I'll find and check it.

-Pat

D245 is indeed a tunnel diode.

Later this week I'm going to open up the other Type 547 and perform the same HV check and at the same time I'll give R233 the "finger test" and see how hot it's getting. Agree that I don't see any reason for it to run really warm.

You know, maybe tomorrow morning I'll pull the hp 3456A off the top of my fully functional Type 547 and I'll pull that cover and "finger test" R233. I'll let you know.

Edit, in the meantime check your PSU rails. The -150V is the reference and is adjustable.

2nd edit, careful checking tunnel diodes. You can damage them very easily. Best test is....does the scope have a stable trigger? If yes, leave it alone.

[BU508A]

Never heard about a NEPER unit before... now need to go look it up I guess !
You live and learn...

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

[Vince]

Ah, Neper like " log Neperien "... get it.

What I don't get however, then, is that a log is not a unit in itself, you can have a log of any ratio... so "measuring" Nepers doesn't mean anything to me ?!

In itself it does not say what physical property of an electrical signal the TE is actually looking at / measuring ?! 

It's like I said " I bought a dB meter !! " yeah.. to measure what ?? Sound pressure, voltage ? current  ? power, noise, weight, distance, sugar level in your blood or in wine, earth quake wave length ?! What ever else ?!

Still, it's cool to know there is such a thing as a " Neper " meter !

[Cerebus]

Never heard about a NEPER unit before... now need to go look it up I guess !
You live and learn...

Like bels and decibels but using log_e rather than the log₁₀ basis of bels and decibels.

[Neper]

Still, it's cool to know there is such a thing as " Neper " meter !

They've been out of use for a long time. When I was working as an outside broadcast engineer, here in Germany, the guys from Deutsche Bundespost drove up with their little Mercedes van to wherever we were broadcasting from, parked next to our O/B van and handed us the ends of a twisted pair as the audio line back to our Cologne studios.  Their level meters in this van were calibrated in Neper. First and last time I've ever seen one in real life. That was in the late 1970s.

[Saskia]

crap day today. Me no happy camper ...
Wind blew the door of my car into another car.
Eff my life. 4 digits damage.

The Megger


the probe



N6700B



Asteroids



Also, need to rearrange the desk that I just set up.

I hate it when a plan falls apart.

[Cubdriver]

Later this week I'm going to open up the other Type 547 and perform the same HV check and at the same time I'll give R233 the "finger test" and see how hot it's getting. Agree that I don't see any reason for it to run really warm.

You know, maybe tomorrow morning I'll pull the hp 3456A off the top of my fully functional Type 547 and I'll pull that cover and "finger test" R233. I'll let you know.

Edit, in the meantime check your PSU rails. The -150V is the reference and is adjustable.

2nd edit, careful checking tunnel diodes. You can damage them very easily. Best test is....does the scope have a stable trigger? If yes, leave it alone.

I certainly don't see a reason for it to be running over boiling water warm!  Just be careful finger testing it lest that be its normal operating temp.  The one next to it was rather toasty, too.  Burned fingers are not pleasant.

Plan to poke at filter caps and check rails tonight if I can, and will slap a voltmeter across that resistor to see what's on it.  I suppose it's remotely possible it's heat from the one next door that's shiny blue ceramic coated rather than the matte black that R233 is causing the camera to be fooled by emissivity differences, but think that's a long shot.  I should watch it with the camera as it turns on and see which gets hot first.  Another thing to try later.

Thanks for the input, Mike.

-Pat

[Specmaster]

crap day today. Me no happy camper ...
Wind blew the door of my car into another car.
Eff my life. 4 digits damage.

You have insurance, yes?

[xrunner]

Never heard about a NEPER unit before... now need to go look it up I guess !
You live and learn...

Like bels and decibels but using log_e rather than the log₁₀ basis of bels and decibels.

One of my ham friends knows what dBm means and that 100 W = 50 dBm (seldom few others do). I told him to tell them that his transceiver output 5 Bm of power and see what kind of questions he got. 

[Zucca]

crap day today. Me no happy camper ...
Wind blew the door of my car into another car.
Eff my life. 4 digits damage.

You have insurance, yes?

100€ she has one. 99% of humans on German soil have insurance.

[Zucca]

I have a birthday with a zero at the end this week and had lunch with the family today. Twin sister (slightly older) was there of course.
Gifts were received 
The Cheese was from Sis and brother in law as part of a Fortnum and Mason Hamper
Facom and Knipex were from my brother (he needed a clue and I'd seen both on here). I was only expecting one or the other.
R&S was from SWMBO 
I'm well fed and very happy. I might just have a beer from the hamper.

That Knipex 86 03 180 was left behind (no joke, he forgot a Knipex behind!) from a plumber when I was living in Germany. I did not receive a call and I did not call back.
Yeah sometimes I am evil! 

Italiener....

[Saskia]

crap day today. Me no happy camper ...
Wind blew the door of my car into another car.
Eff my life. 4 digits damage.

You have insurance, yes?

Zucca wins. Premiums will go up though so it will be 4 digits in the long run.

[srb1954]

The 3400x  (and digital 3403x) are completly different beasts from a standard VTVM. They use thermal converters so are proper RMS by design. No calculations or conversions. They are correct whatever the wavefom including high frequency components up to 20MHz.  The Fluke 892x series are similar.

Shahriar could have saved himself a lot of work by just going out and buying a Fluke 8920A or 8921A, with the GPIB option, and writing a suitable user interface for his PC using Labview or similar. This would have provided all the functionality of his custom modifications without having to even open the case of the instrument.