Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tautech]

Also, MUST, our military intelligence organisation, has the raven on its shoulder patch. Rarely worn on mission, I assume.

Military intellignce? Rainbow Warrior, springs to mind

Totally shameful incident and wars have started over less. Still can’t bring myself to buy anything French or support them in any way.

[Cerebus]

You've just made me realise that Vince has gone rather quiet.

Vincent, où es tu?

[mnementh]

Touched down at a Best Western in Dubois, PA. Made a little more than 1/3 of our trip; pretty fair considering we lounged around at a restaurant after loading teh   trailer.

All is well, so far. 

mnem
Thank Ifni for small favors.

[mnementh]

FreeBSD server now is a very happy 13.0-RELEASE-p7 machine that knows about all its volume groups. (on a ZFS system, I always name the system zpool "rootvg" for obvious, attractive raven black reasons) Took a few hours of googling and iDRAC console waiting. Mostly waiting with a mounting sense of panic. Once I had a booting kernel and a single user prompt, I knew I had a path forward.

Only middle managers downgrade out of a problem. Engineers upgrade out of a problem.

Also won manuals for 8020A and 8060A, 20 SEK (1€90c) each.

Mans is root of all evil. 

mnem
sudo sudoku.

[mnementh]

just blew 200 Pesos on pinball spares and consumables ...
started to take the Dracula apart to properly clean it.

Anybody got a 50l ultrasonic for me ? my 10l is a bit small ...

Dropping the entire body table in the ultrasonic is cheating. 

mnem
*known to clean the Dollar Store out of toothbrushes from time to time*

[mnementh]

You've just made me realise that Vince has gone rather quiet.

Vincent, où es tu?

He's been lurking... I've seen him thank a few posts and eevBlog sez he was last active this morning. Maybe he's waiting for his eyebrows to grow back after the last time I tooted...

mnem

[Zucca]

Let's say you could buy a MPLAB ICD4 for $160 shipped would you pull the trigger?

PS: Today I painting the ceiling of my Lab. White, why people paint the ceiling in different colors? There is only one color for the ceiling W H I T E!
Ceiling must be white and only white. Thanks.

[Brumby]

My parents had the ceiling of their dining room painted purple .... you know: 7 on the colour code chart.


The painter questioned them, but they were quite clear about it.  When he finished, he said it actually didn't look too bad.

[tggzzz]

Let's say you could buy a MPLAB ICD4 for $160 shipped would you pull the trigger?

PS: Today I painting the ceiling of my Lab. White, why people paint the ceiling in different colors? There is only one color for the ceiling W H I T E!
Ceiling must be white and only white. Thanks.

A darker ceiling and lighter walls will make the room look larger horizontally and smaller vertically. Sometimes that can be a useful effect.

Check it by drawing a room in openoffice (etc), and colouring the trapezoids different shades of grey. No doubt there's a website that also shows that effect.

[Peter_O]

Yesterday I spot-weldet a banana contact tab of my differential probe against a grounded PSU casing with 230V AC. 



The welding is excellent. 

Most interestingly the slow 1.25A 20x5mm Fuse blew spectactular ...



...before a Brennenstuhl safety switch (30ms switch time acc. to datasheet) engaged, which it did.
https://www.brennenstuhl.com/en-DE/products/plugs-sockets/circuit-breaker-plug-in-adapter-bdi-a-2-30-ip54

[tautech]

Soz it's time to hit the scratcher and having helped Larry Minor the last 2 days do his customers retaining wall setup and concrete pour decided it would be easy to drop off without the customary nightcap (read knackered) so flopped into the sack and attempted to flip on the TV for a few minutes to catch up with the world's happenings.
Well the bugger wouldn't go ! 

Some years back we remodeled the wardrobing and fitted the TV into a purpose built recess where it's behaved happily for a couple of decades or more until NZ TV went digital then we needed to add one of them digital to analog convertors/decoders and this was the little bugger that had decided to go AWOL tonight after about a decade of use. 

So strides and shirt back on and out to the workshop where the lid was popped on the decoder to reveal one nicely bulging 1000uF 10V Low ESR cap on the secondary side of a small/simple SMPS supply. Had plenty and swapping it out was piss easy and powering it with the covers off revealed a green power light instead of red and a much brighter LED display. 
So what did this pregnant at both ends little turd measure: 6.5uF with an ESR of 125 Ohms ! 

Now wide awake although a little jaded after a couple of hard days in the heat (28C today) the good work deserves a nightcap ..... 

[VK5RC]

@tautech good job, but not something to happen before bed, I can see myself staying awake if I didn't start to fix it right then (getting grumpy - they don't make things properly now etc) , or the act of pulling everything apart would get me awake but satisfied if I could fix it.
Good job 👍

[vk6zgo]

My parents had the ceiling of their dining room painted purple .... you know: 7 on the colour code chart.


The painter questioned them, but they were quite clear about it.  When he finished, he said it actually didn't look too bad.

Do they live in Fremantle?

[tautech]

@tautech good job, but not something to happen before bed, I can see myself staying awake if I didn't start to fix it right then (getting grumpy - they don't make things properly now etc) , or the act of pulling everything apart would get me awake but satisfied if I could fix it.
Good job 👍

Ya gotta win the odd one....says he looking at all the other stuff on the bench. 
Yep you guessed it wide awake now. 
As The Defpom says....it's always caps. 

Toddles off to find a fizzy liquid sedative..........

[Andrew_Debbie]

The welding is excellent. 

A few years ago, the -415V supply rail on the gradient amplifier capacitor bank spot welded itself to the case.     The amplifiers drive gradient coils inside the MRI scanner bore.  Magnetic field gradients primarily are used for spatial encoding.



The negative supply from two or four banks (20x10,000µF @415V) discharged into the chassis and the rack ground.   



Blowing this fuse





The liquid cooled amplifiers are rated  +/- 350V  500A 100mS pulse 50% duty cycle.   



The green tags mark the  replacements.   Thank goodness we had a service contract.    .

[Robert763]

Yesterday I spot-weldet a banana contact tab of my differential probe against a grounded PSU casing with 230V AC. 



The welding is excellent. 

Most interestingly the slow 1.25A 20x5mm Fuse blew spectactular ...



...before a Brennenstuhl safety switch (30ms switch time acc. to datasheet) engaged, which it did.
https://www.brennenstuhl.com/en-DE/products/plugs-sockets/circuit-breaker-plug-in-adapter-bdi-a-2-30-ip54

That's non-compliant design. The short-circuit current obviously exceeded the breaking capacity of the fuse. Typically any fuse directly connected to the mains needs to be ceramic bodied and sand filled. Some very low current glass ones may be OK because of the very small amunt of metal in them.  For a 240V domestic supply you really need t allow for at least 1000A breaking capacity.
This 1A fuse is OK https://uk.farnell.com/siba/70-065-65-1a/fuse-antisurge-1a/dp/1175140
but this one is not https://uk.farnell.com/littelfuse/0313001-mxp/fuse-slow-blow-1a/dp/4104006
The cermic SIBA fuse is rated to break 1500 Amps while the glass Littlefuse is only rated to break 35 Amps.  You can't rely on any fixed installation fuse or circuit breaker to limit the current because you can't know it's response time.

[Ice-Tea]

The short-circuit current obviously exceeded the breaking capacity of the fuse.

I'd say that as far as "breaking" goes, it did a fine job.

...

I'll show myself out.

[Cerebus]

Let's say you could buy a MPLAB ICD4 for $160 shipped would you pull the trigger?

PS: Today I painting the ceiling of my Lab. White, why people paint the ceiling in different colors? There is only one color for the ceiling W H I T E!
Ceiling must be white and only white. Thanks.

[Cerebus]

Most interestingly the slow 1.25A 20x5mm Fuse blew spectactular ...

That is why I always get the ceramic HBC versions. A few pence more but rated for a 1k5A fault before they do the exploding thing.

[Cerebus]

That's non-compliant design.

Or incompetent servicing.

 The original may well have had HBC 5x20mm fuses but they were replaced by someone who didn't know why, or heed, the back panel printing saying "Always replace fuses with ones of the same rating and type".

[mnementh]

The short-circuit current obviously exceeded the breaking capacity of the fuse.

I'd say that as far as "breaking" goes, it did a fine job.   ...   I'll show myself out.

*halfheartedly lobs 1/2 a soggy ol' boot towards Belgium over his morning moose pee (only slightly burnt at this hotel) and baggied banana-nut muffin*

mnem
I dunno which is worse... this coffee, or the fact I might actually be starting to like it... 
  *twitch... twitch... twitcha-twitch...*

[mansaxel]

The short-circuit current obviously exceeded the breaking capacity of the fuse.

I'd say that as far as "breaking" goes, it did a fine job.

...

I'll show myself out.

Quelle blague de tonton!

[mnementh]

...So strides and shirt back on and out to the workshop where the lid was popped on the decoder to reveal one nicely bulging 1000uF 10V Low ESR cap on the secondary side of a small/simple SMPS supply. Had plenty and swapping it out was piss easy and powering it with the covers off revealed a green power light instead of red and a much brighter LED display. 
So what did this pregnant at both ends little turd measure: 6.5uF with an ESR of 125 Ohms ! 

Now wide awake although a little jaded after a couple of hard days in the heat (28C today) the good work deserves a nightcap ..... 

Number 9... number 9... number 9...

Yesterday I spot-weldet a banana contact tab of my differential probe against a grounded PSU casing with 230V AC.        The welding is excellent. 
Most interestingly the slow 1.25A 20x5mm Fuse blew spectactular ...   

...before a Brennenstuhl safety switch (30ms switch time acc. to datasheet) engaged, which it did.
https://www.brennenstuhl.com/en-DE/products/plugs-sockets/circuit-breaker-plug-in-adapter-bdi-a-2-30-ip54

Oooooh. number 2 and number 6. We have a twofer!!!   

mnem
Oh, and a heaping helping of number 11 for both of yazz. 

[mnementh]

The short-circuit current obviously exceeded the breaking capacity of the fuse.

I'd say that as far as "breaking" goes, it did a fine job.   ...   I'll show myself out.

Quelle blague de tonton!

   Quelle blague de Tauntaun!

mnem
"And I thought it smelled bad on the outside..."

[mansaxel]

The short-circuit current obviously exceeded the breaking capacity of the fuse.

I'd say that as far as "breaking" goes, it did a fine job.   ...   I'll show myself out.

*halfheartedly lobs 1/2 a soggy ol' boot towards Belgium over his morning moose pee (only slightly burnt at this hotel) and baggied banana-nut muffin*

mnem
I dunno which is worse... this coffee, or the fact I might actually be starting to like it... 
  *twitch... twitch... twitcha-twitch...*

US coffee is always a disaster -- the fact that Starbucks is viewed as an improvement speaks volumes. I've already written about the three coffeemakers in Malvern PA (none as black as the 5000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire) so won't reiterate that, but just want to share the fact that people expect our corner of the world to bog down in snow completely tonight. And I'm going out for beers and lies with colleagues tonight...

Drive carefully, unless you can melt your way (flatulently)...