Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[vk6zgo]

Anyway, little by little, this house is starting to look more and more like a house, and less and less like a construction site or dump yard... getting there.

Do you have the 3 phases 380VAC available in your house? 

No, it's a brand new house I got built, so no 3 phase.  One of my neighbour right across the street does have 3 phase but because he is retired, his house is old. Many old house in the village had 3 phase.
I guess I could technically ask for 3 phase, don't see why I could not get it, but it's expensive to get connected to it, I hear from a friend who contemplated doing that to get an old 3 phase lathe... before he gave when he got a quote from a sparky ! 

Electricity is already too expensive for me here, and getting more expensive significantly every year. Getting 3 phase would only incite me to get powerful machines that would increase the bill even more, I just can't afford it. Plus, garage will be tiny so zero space for powerful/space hungry machinery any way. I sure would love some 3 phase beefy wood working machines, but it's never going to be sadly ! 

I need adjust my dreams so they can fit my budget and available space ! 

I have enough space to make a decentish lab in thie 10.6m2 bedroom, plus some space in the attic later for a bit more hobby related stuff like my old Lego Technic sets, a few vintage computers, a plotter to print fold out schematic, a sofa with a decent vintage stereo system for relaxing... something like that. In the garage, 60m2 total but a 25% will be for relocating the water heater (to free some room in the bathroom and make custom furniture for extra storage), washing /drying machine, food stock, Tek scope collection and random TE. Then 40% for a car and general purpose / mechanical workbench, shelving to store tools and supplies. The the remaining 40% for shelving again to store more stuff, and my wood working hobby that I am hoping to get more serious about : build a real wood worker bench, heavy duty one. A few stationary machines as well, the basic ones that you need to get anything done with wood, and that's about it, space all used up ! 

I have never seen, nor heard of, any typical private residence in the US having 3 phase power. And many residential (non commercial) areas don't even have 3 phase available. Single phase only. I suppose if you wanted 3 phase feed and it were available you could get it.  Probably at a ridiculous cost.

My road due to length of it does have overhead 3 phase. But that's for load balancing and the farms in the area. The side roads with private residences are single phase overhead feed.     

I sacrificed the 3ph socket in my carport, so the electrician could repurpose the cable run to supply power to the "split system" air cond we fitted a couple of years back.
It was either that, or get a carpenter in to open up the jarrah plank flooring at both ends of the run, as the crawl space under our house only is about "cat height" at that end!
We still use two phases to run the kitchen electric stove, & maybe three for the Solar HWS booster (not sure).
We had an "instantaneous" 3ph hot water system when we came here, but it was EOL, so was replaced by the Solar HWS.

[vk6zgo]

I am just done oiling my brand new oak parquet in the bedroom.

<snip>

So no... no no no ... NO !

<snip>

Now, do I look like the kind of man who would sit back and smugly say "Told you so"?



Yes, yes I do look like that kind of man.

So all in all... it was quite an experience. Next time I oil that parquet (recommendation are once or twice a year I gather), I will just do it manually like I just did... sacrifice a towel, and kneel down, and rub, rub...     Thank goodness the room is only 10m2 ! 

Once the whole thing is sealed "topping off" the finish with a little oil is easy. It only needs a tiny amount, no more than just enough to wet the surface evenly.

I wish you'd shouted "help!" earlier. For the future reference of others, the standard approach to oiling hardwood is:

(1) Apply an initial coat diluted with white spirit (aka mineral turpentine, mineral spirits, whatever it's called where you are). Dilution ratio is not critical, just enough to make it wipeable rather than gloopy and not so dilute that you're hardly applying any oil. 10%-50% white spirit as a seat-of-the-pants guess.
(2) Leave 15 minutes to soak in.
(3) Wipe off with a clean dry rag.
(4) Leave 24 hours to dry.
(5) Wipe over a thin coat of neat oil. Enough to guarantee that you wet out the surface.
(6) Leave 15 minutes to soak in.
(7) Wipe off with a clean dry rag.
( Leave 24 hours to dry. [That's a 8 followed by a bracket, but SMF is stupid]
(9) Have you got the level of finish you want? Of so, go to 10, if not go to 5.
(10) Drink beer.

Interestingly, White Spirit & Mineral turps are different things in Oz, with the former being a fairly bland fluid, with little odor, whereas the latter has a strong odor. Another difference is that White Spirit dries cleanly, & Mineral Turps leaves an oily residue.
The local Coles supermarket is even more confused----- they supplied me with two bottles of MT as substitutes for my online order for Methylated Spirit.

[Specmaster]

Tants and lots of them !

Only 9 according to the workshop manual.

[Specmaster]

Made some progress today with the Thandar SC110 mini portable scope, stripped it down for fault-finding and after a good long coat of looking at under magnification I have so far failed to find a smoking gun, it really all looks pretty good to me. All the solder joints that are visible without further stripping seem to be in good condition, maybe I might find something lurking beneath the vertical and horizontal board once I remove it, who knows.

I shall be interested to hear how you separate the vertical boards, and how you test them when separated.

The X and Y board is on a series of header pins and sockets as is the vertical board with the rotary controls and the CRT board appears to be soldered onto right angle header pins. As to testing, I think, I'll have to reassemble it all to do the actual testing afterwards.

It won't be an easy job as the boards are rather cramped with all the components squeezed in rather tightly.   

[tautech]

Tants and lots of them !

Only 9 according to the workshop manual.

Drops back to count them....bit hard as the same ones appear in multiple pics.

Murphys foot soldiers are such it only take one but if you've got the schematic and can check which have minimal headroom they're generally the ones waiting to ruin your day.

[med6753]

Made some progress today with the Thandar SC110 mini portable scope, stripped it down for fault-finding and after a good long coat of looking at under magnification I have so far failed to find a smoking gun, it really all looks pretty good to me. All the solder joints that are visible without further stripping seem to be in good condition, maybe I might find something lurking beneath the vertical and horizontal board once I remove it, who knows.

I find a few caps with small holes in them, but they exhibit zero outward signs of suffering, the holes appear to have been there from new  .

Here a few pics so far, I doubt that I shall be working on it tomorrow as I shall be over at Hangar 11 collection, working on that Ferguson TE20 tractor restoration.

That tant on the far left. What is that black at the base?  And it looks like it has a crack in it.

[Cubdriver]

Good eye, Mike - that one does look like it has gotten a bit toasty at the lead attachment point.

-Pat

[Specmaster]

Tants and lots of them !

Only 9 according to the workshop manual.

Drops back to count them....bit hard as the same ones appear in multiple pics.

Murphys foot soldiers are such it only take one but if you've got the schematic and can check which have minimal headroom they're generally the ones waiting to ruin your day.

Counted them on the boards, 9 it is, the rectangular blue ones are ceramics according to the parts list, 63V rated.

[BU508A]

Good eye, Mike - that one does look like it has gotten a bit toasty at the lead attachment point.

You are speaking here to the Godfather of recapping! 

Of course, he is spotting issues like this.     

[med6753]

Good eye, Mike - that one does look like it has gotten a bit toasty at the lead attachment point.

-Pat

There's a reason I'm known as the tant killer in these parts. 

[Cubdriver]

Very true!  Old capacitors pee in fear when they hear his voice.   

-Pat

[mnementh]

IN OTHER NEWS: USPS just delivered my NEJISAURUS PZ-58 screw-chomping pliers.

They are quite delightful: Excellent fit & finish; a joy in the hand. A full report and side by side comparison will be forthcoming when my PZ-57s arrive.

   

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!   

TL:DR - They're here! They're effing amazing! I don't effing CARE that they cost me $60 $54 ! 




Here they are stacked for size comparison. PZ-58 are 160mm overall; PZ-57 are 120mm.

It is pretty evident from looking at them side by side (and at the pics of the PZ-56 & PZ-59) that the development of these tools leverages existing raw forgings designed for some other application, then the NejiSaurus Secret Sauce tool grinding is done to make the finished product. The PZ-56 doesn't have a wire cutter like the PZ-58; it just has a plain flat milled jaw out of which the screw-chomper teeth are ground. Also, it doesn't have spring-retract like the PZ-58.




Here's the business end; PZ-57 have 5mm jaw width/3.5mm jaw height at the tip and are supposed to fit 2mm-3.5mm screw heads. PZ-58 have 7mm jaw width/7mm jaw height at the tip and are supposed to fit 3mm-9.5mm screw heads.

Note that the PZ-58 jaws don't meet like the PZ-57; one could, if one were inclined, change this by grinding out the wire-cutter with a Dremel. (I know! Sacrilege! )




Piranha teeth!!!     No, seriously... the serrations are exactly as described: Sharp grippy angles, but ground to an inside curve such that the ends of the jaws pull themselves under the edge of the screw head.

Here you can also see how the head shape is beveled to allow as much clearance around nearby obstacles as possible. Excellent engineering. 




And here's the Money Shot:

This is my primary use case; these Chinesium button-head screws which come on China-direct 3D Printers are of... questionable quality. Some are so hard they're brittle; some seem to be made of case-hardened cheese.

Whether they fit any standard Allen wrench or none in captivity in the free world, or what exact one you'll get in any particular place on any particular printer seems to be entirely a combination of chance compounded by what was available cheapest by the shipping container-full on AliBaba, etc...

As you can see, both have no problem getting a grip on these total PITA screws that when (not if) they strip out, I usually have to slot with a Dremel unless I get lucky and my easy-outs get a grip instead of just grinding the hole round or eating the head off the shank.

Two claws up from this tool-dwagon!

mnem
Sorry for inflicting big pics on you Vince... in this case, resolution and detail are essential.

[TERRA Operative]

Looking around, I think what I want is a full-band or all-band radio rather than a dedicated shortwave only receiver. That Grundig Satellit looks like it's pretty much the style of thing I need. Something like that would be good.

Restoration is ok for a decent unit, my budget would be a couple hundred dollars max I think.

A few from my collection (in storage) all of which probably need restoration & recapping, can't comment how good the shortwave performance is as reception is crap here with all the modern RF noise generators, gets much worse at night.  Plus I only really use the MW & FM bands these days, gone are the days we had music on LW (used to listen to Atlantic 252 kHz when I was younger).

USSR era Selena & VEF? radios, I've had these for several decades, Shango066 likes the Soviet era radios too, some of which he reckons are excellent performers.

I like the design of this one, old-school and functional but still looking smart.

[Cubdriver]

TL:DR - They're here! They're effing amazing! I don't effing CARE that they cost me $60! 




Here they are stacked for size comparison. PZ-58 are 160mm overall; PZ-57 are 120mm.

It is pretty evident from looking at them side by side (and at the pics of the PZ-56 & PZ-59) that the development of these tools leverages existing raw forgings designed for some other application, then the NejiSaurus Secret Sauce tool grinding is done to make the finished product. The PZ-56 doesn't have a wire cutter like the PZ-58; it just has a plain flat milled jaw out of which the screw-chomper teeth are ground. Also, it doesn't have spring-retract like the PZ-58.




Here's the business end; PZ-57 have 5mm jaw width/3.5mm jaw height at the tip and are supposed to fit 2mm-3.5mm screw heads. PZ-58 have 7mm jaw width/7mm jaw height at the tip and are supposed to fit 3mm-9.5mm screw heads.

Note that the PZ-58 jaws don't meet like the PZ-57; one could, if one were inclined, change this by grinding out the wire-cutter with a Dremel. (I know! Sacrilege! )




Piranha teeth!!!     No, seriously... the serrations are exactly as described: Sharp grippy angles, but ground to an inside curve such that the ends of the jaws pull themselves under the edge of the screw head.

Here you can also see how the head shape is beveled to allow as much clearance around nearby obstacles as possible. Excellent engineering. 




And here's the Money Shot:

This is my primary use case; these Chinesium button-head screws which come on China-direct 3D Printers are of... questionable quality. Some are so hard they're brittle; some seem to be made of case-hardened cheese.

Whether they fit any standard Allen wrench or none in captivity in the free world, or what exact one you'll get in any particular place on any particular printer seems to be entirely a combination of chance compounded by what was available cheapest by the shipping container-full on AliBaba, etc...

As you can see, both have no problem getting a grip on these total PITA screws that when (not if) they strip out, I usually have to slot with a Dremel unless I get lucky and my easy-outs get a grip instead of just grinding the hole round or eating the head off the shank.

Two claws up from this tool-dwagon!

mnem
Sorry for inflicting big pics on you Vince... in this case, resolution and detail are essential.

Damn you you're gonna cost me more $$$!!!  I'd seen those a while back and considered, but previously held off.       

Thanks for the review.   

-Pat

[Cerebus]

Tants and lots of them !

My brain was trying to read that as "tarts and lots of them". I don't know whether it was a subconscious desire for some pastry or a good night out.

[Cubdriver]

Tants and lots of them !

My brain was trying to read that as "tarts and lots of them". I don't know whether it was a subconscious desire for some pastry or a good night out.

Couldn't it be both?  Why limit yourself?

-Pat

[Specmaster]

Made some progress today with the Thandar SC110 mini portable scope, stripped it down for fault-finding and after a good long coat of looking at under magnification I have so far failed to find a smoking gun, it really all looks pretty good to me. All the solder joints that are visible without further stripping seem to be in good condition, maybe I might find something lurking beneath the vertical and horizontal board once I remove it, who knows.

I find a few caps with small holes in them, but they exhibit zero outward signs of suffering, the holes appear to have been there from new  .

Here a few pics so far, I doubt that I shall be working on it tomorrow as I shall be over at Hangar 11 collection, working on that Ferguson TE20 tractor restoration.

That tant on the far left. What is that black at the base?  And it looks like it has a crack in it.

I don't know, but it is not shorted, and my Chinese component tester reads it (in circuit) as being 116uF with 6.4 ESR but the parts list has it down as 10uF 16V.

I would remove it and test it but as its now 1:11am, and my lab is between 2 bedrooms, I can't fire up my de-soldering gun so it will have to wait.

[mnementh]

Tants and lots of them !

My brain was trying to read that as "tarts and lots of them". I don't know whether it was a subconscious desire for some pastry or a good night out.

I read that as "Desiree had a good night out eating pastries with some tarts." 

mnem
Yes, I do realize there is a much dirtier way to read that. Thanks for noticing.

[mnementh]

And here's the Money Shot:   

This is my primary use case; these Chinesium button-head screws which come on China-direct 3D Printers are of... questionable quality...

Two claws up from this tool-dwagon!

Damn you you're gonna cost me more $$$!!!  I'd seen those a while back and considered, but previously held off.       

Thanks for the review.   

-Pat

Hey, every once in a while I have to do some actual work; pay my membership dues. 

Seriously... Sorry for the wallet pain, but not sorry for showing off. These things are made of win.   Need them once and they've paid for themselves as far as I'm concerned.

mnem
*toolish*

[mnementh]

Well, Hell... can get them both from Amazon for $41.80 $44.44 (I forgot the guv'nah's cut ) right now. 

I paid (goes back to his purchase history with a calculator) $54.

https://www.amazon.com/Engineers-screw-Zaurus-M2-PZ-57/dp/B001D7KU7W/

https://www.amazon.com/ENGINEER-PZ-58-Extractor-Combination-fasteners/dp/B002L6HJAA/

I know I looked for the PZ-58s, and they were $29. Now much less.




And these PZ-55 pliers also look interesting; might actually get enough grip to use in some automotive applications.

https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-PZ-55-Gripping-Pliers-Extractors/dp/B000TGNVUG/

mnem
*toddles off to ded before he bankrupts himself*

[mnementh]

Kweld development thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/guesses-on-what-i-am-attempting-here/

Yep, this thing is the real McCoy.

Holy fuckadoodle... I didn't even realize this; not only does it provide more current, it also gives you a log of the weld event every time.

mnem
*goes to lie down before I fall down*

[cyclin_al]

Well, Hell... can get them both from Amazon for $41.80 right now.  I paid (goes back to his purchase history with a calculator) $54.

https://www.amazon.com/Engineers-screw-Zaurus-M2-PZ-57/dp/B001D7KU7W/

https://www.amazon.com/ENGINEER-PZ-58-Extractor-Combination-fasteners/dp/B002L6HJAA/

I know I looked for the PZ-58s, and they were $29. Now much less.




And these PZ-55 pliers also look interesting; might actually get enough grip to use in some automotive applications.

https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-PZ-55-Gripping-Pliers-Extractors/dp/B000TGNVUG/

mnem
*toddles off to ded before he bankrupts himself*

Good Great find!  I am about to go broke ... 

EDIT:  Yep, going broke ... about $76 CAD from amazon.ca.  Amazon.com said no duties, but that got added in at the checkout, so that was a no-go in the end.

[TERRA Operative]

I pay like $25 for these, I got a yellow handle version for $12 a while back.

/showoff mode.

[med6753]

I pay like $25 for these, I got a yellow handle version for $12 a while back.

/showoff mode.

So far your "showoff" is a fail. 

[Robert763]

I am just done oiling my brand new oak parquet in the bedroom.

<snip>

So no... no no no ... NO !

<snip>

Now, do I look like the kind of man who would sit back and smugly say "Told you so"?

SNIP

Yes, yes I do look like that kind of man.

So all in all... it was quite an experience. Next time I oil that parquet (recommendation are once or twice a year I gather), I will just do it manually like I just did... sacrifice a towel, and kneel down, and rub, rub...     Thank goodness the room is only 10m2 ! 

Once the whole thing is sealed "topping off" the finish with a little oil is easy. It only needs a tiny amount, no more than just enough to wet the surface evenly.

I wish you'd shouted "help!" earlier. For the future reference of others, the standard approach to oiling hardwood is:

(1) Apply an initial coat diluted with white spirit (aka mineral turpentine, mineral spirits, whatever it's called where you are). Dilution ratio is not critical, just enough to make it wipeable rather than gloopy and not so dilute that you're hardly applying any oil. 10%-50% white spirit as a seat-of-the-pants guess.
(2) Leave 15 minutes to soak in.
(3) Wipe off with a clean dry rag.
(4) Leave 24 hours to dry.
(5) Wipe over a thin coat of neat oil. Enough to guarantee that you wet out the surface.
(6) Leave 15 minutes to soak in.
(7) Wipe off with a clean dry rag.
( Leave 24 hours to dry. [That's a 8 followed by a bracket, but SMF is stupid]
(9) Have you got the level of finish you want? Of so, go to 10, if not go to 5.
(10) Drink beer.

Interestingly, White Spirit & Mineral turps are different things in Oz, with the former being a fairly bland fluid, with little odor, whereas the latter has a strong odor. Another difference is that White Spirit dries cleanly, & Mineral Turps leaves an oily residue.
The local Coles supermarket is even more confused----- they supplied me with two bottles of MT as substitutes for my online order for Methylated Spirit.

Your descrition of mineral turpintine sounds like genuine turpintine. Various sources say mineral turpintine is the term for white sprit in NZ/AUS.  Maybe your supplier is repacaging the wrong stuff.  In the UK mineral turps is sometimes called turpintine subsitute but white spirit is more common these days.  Another, more technical description is stoddart solvent. This contans a specified percentage of > C10 hydrocarbons, They are basically all highly refined kerosine.