Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Vince]

One here for Vince:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284715424647

165 Euros ?! It's a solid twice the market value ! 

It's a 553. Mine is a 554 hence much better specs and features, and paid 90 Euros for it ... and just a few days ago I saw another 554 priced at only 50 Euros !!! 
Obviously it was sold within a a 32th of a quarter of a third of a split pico second.... so I had no chance of getting it 

Ideally I would want a 556 but I don't even know if Metrix ever made them to begin with... I can't remember ever seeing one for sale anyhoo.

[AVGresponding]

One here for Vince:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284715424647

It's more than 3 times the market value ! 

It's a 553. Mine is a 554 hence much better specs and features, and paid 90 Euros for it ( 75 quid or something ?)... and just a few days aog I sad another 554 priced at only 50 Euros !!! 
Obviously it was sold within a a 32th of a a quarter of a third of a split pico second.... so I had no chance of getting it 

Ideally I would want a 556 but I don't even know if Metrix ever made them.. I can't remember ever seeing one for sale anyhoo.

Yes, I know. If it was a UK seller, I'd throw an offer of £25.

To me it looks feasible to convert one of these to battery operation. How much of the case is empty space?

[Vince]

OK, I'm doing it, just ordered a Dupont crimping kit
Kit arrives tomorrow from Amazon, so I will leave it alone until the leads have been made.

Looks nice, thanks for the picciy.. I didn't even know one could crimp his own Dupont thingies... do let us know what you thingk of the quality od the kit, if it's worth it or a waste of money...

[med6753]

Started lay out for cooling fan install on 7904. Template installed for drilling of the mounting holes. The fan will mount in that open space in the back above the PSU down in the lower right. The fan will draw the air in from the bottom vents and exhaust it out the side. The individual who initially did this also installed a fan on the opposite side by the vertical output board. He must have used a very slim fan. The fans I have won't clear the board and the cover. So I'll just run for now with one fan. It will probably be sufficient anyway especially since this scope never had a cooling fan.

More as I complete the install.


 

[Vince]

One here for Vince:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284715424647

It's more than 3 times the market value ! 

It's a 553. Mine is a 554 hence much better specs and features, and paid 90 Euros for it ( 75 quid or something ?)... and just a few days aog I sad another 554 priced at only 50 Euros !!! 
Obviously it was sold within a a 32th of a a quarter of a third of a split pico second.... so I had no chance of getting it 

Ideally I would want a 556 but I don't even know if Metrix ever made them.. I can't remember ever seeing one for sale anyhoo.

Yes, I know. If it was a UK seller, I'd throw an offer of £25.

To me it looks feasible to convert one of these to battery operation. How much of the case is empty space?

25 quid, that's too extreme !   
554 much better sure, but 553 just like the MX53C it's based on, is an excellent alround meter with good build quality, it's no cheap chinese stuff.
so 25 quid, shame on you. Very disrespectful for this piece of TE 
you might as well offer just one pound, the result will be the same from the seller 
50 or 60 would be good, seller would counter it at 70 and you got yourself a nice meter for a reasonable amount of money.
But... I understand that for you 25 quid is like 100 for a normal person !


Room inside ? You could have just type " MX554" in the search box to find my presentation post about it just 2 month back... you lazy bastard !

I did it for you :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3955286/#msg3955286

As you can see.... pleeeenty of space. You could probably fit a battery so big that it would run the meter for 157 years. Maybe even 162 years, need to fine tune my calculations ! 

Yes, plenty of space, excellent candidate indeed...

[Ice-Tea]

Just ordered for 125€ worth of caps. If it brings back the PSU, it will be the best investment ever.

[mansaxel]

Personally, I'd have put bigger proper drip loops in, so it looked like a U bend on waste pipe, but I suspect that was the best you could do because you never had sufficient cable? Always good practise to include a proper loop, then you have some extra cable to spare if at anytime you need it due to reconfiguration of the wiring in the box.

Maybe, but this is really a no-brainer. If I need, I'll simply rip the 2m length of cable out and replace it. Less hassle.

[Robert763]

One here for Vince:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284715424647

165 Euros ?! It's a solid twice the market value ! 

It's a 553. Mine is a 554 hence much better specs and features, and paid 90 Euros for it ... and just a few days ago I saw another 554 priced at only 50 Euros !!! 
Obviously it was sold within a a 32th of a quarter of a third of a split pico second.... so I had no chance of getting it 

Ideally I would want a 556 but I don't even know if Metrix ever made them to begin with... I can't remember ever seeing one for sale anyhoo.

Yeah, I've never paid more than £16 including shipping for a Metrix DMM 

[Vince]

[dl6lr]

Happy fixing time again. No photos.

Yesterday I was on my way home on the motor bike and suddenly the cockpit went away. No speed, no RPMs, no fuel gauge, temperature, turn signal, gear indicator: nothing. After I realized the lights went dim and the cockpit showed the ABS light, I got in a hurry to get home. Modern bike can't switch the lights off to lower battery drain Just in time, as shortly after I got home the motor began stuttering and off it was. Drained battery to less than 8V.

As the battery is old, I recharged it. Trying to do so with my power supply (bloody HAMEG, now Rohde&Schwarz, manual explicitly states battery charging is possible) the PSU went *POOF* Had to use the old style charger from the garage.

So today I  measured with the clip-on ammeter the current. No charging when motor runs, but abt. 16A draining.  Time to make her naked, manual says to take off the right side cowling and then you have access to the regulator. But on my machine the cables and connectors where all different and I had to remove both sides of the cowling, the tank, the air filter and with a lot of swearing I managed to disconnect it (a hybrid of a piano player and gynecologist could be helpful). Measured the generator and it seems to be fine. Diode testing of the regulator shows no sign of failure, but a more in depth testing revealed the regulator to be more a kind of 6V reg 

So just dropped an order for a new one, this time I will route the cables different so I have better access to it.

SWMBO told me yesterday: vacuum cleaner stopped working, intermittent operation, the cable went south. I told her to rip it apart, gave her the Fluke handheld and instructed her to locate the failure. Was about 1m from the cleaner, snipped off the cable, crimped on new connectors and she put it together again. So now the cable is a bit shorter 

The PSU has blown the pass transistor and vaporized the shunt resistors. Have to order...

[Specmaster]

OK, I'm doing it, just ordered a Dupont crimping kit
Kit arrives tomorrow from Amazon, so I will leave it alone until the leads have been made.

Looks nice, thanks for the picciy.. I didn't even know one could crimp his own Dupont thingies... do let us know what you thingk of the quality od the kit, if it's worth it or a waste of money...

Here you go, this will help you to make your own Dupont connections.

[tggzzz]

Picked up the Keithley 2015 DMM/THD. I tried it on a voltage standard and a couple of standard resistors, and it worked nicely. Amusing to see the THD of my audio signal sources 0.02%-0.4%, and that it's sine wave output is undrflw%.

Now turn it off and recap it. Those old Keithley 2XXX are known to have leaking caps.
If it is not happened now it will.

Vintage 2005. Caps are Nichicon.

Ones I can see aren't bulging. Will still put it in my repair queue.

These usually look fine from the top... and leak from the bottom 
Not sure if 2005 is "still in range" for the leaky batch 
Better safe than sorry 

Finally recapped the Keithley 2015 THD, after having found DHL left the caps with neighbours and didn't bother to put a card through my letterbox.

No problems under the caps.

Pleasingly at 10V it reads the same as my Agilent 34410 to less than 5ppm. Thanks (I think) to AVGResponding for alerting us to the 2015THD.

I can now flog off my Solartron 7151 computing DMM and my HP3468 DMM. And, when I adjust it, my Keithely 2000. That will leave me with a mere 6 bench DMMs (or 7 if you include the Fluke 4 digit digit squaddie-proof nixie counter and several handhelds. Can't reduce the bench supplies further due to the interesting range of display technologies and number of digits.

[PA0PBZ]

Ideally I would want a 556 but I don't even know if Metrix ever made them to begin with... I can't remember ever seeing one for sale anyhoo.

[Vince]

Cooooool.... hoping I come across one one day, at a decent price...

[AVGresponding]

Scored a bit of a bargain earlier this week, something I may yet turn into an arbitrage purchase.

A lot of 10 Spectrol (now part of Vishay) 534 series 10k 10 turn pots, closely followed by a lot of 9 matching (close enough anyway) 15 turn knobs. Since I had another knob (RS rebrand) in a recent joblot, I now have 10 sets...
If you wanted to buy these from any of the usual suspects, you wouldn't get much change from £70, per set, I managed to get the pots for not much more than that, at which point the other buyers looking at the knobs sensibly gave up the fight and I got the lot for less than the price of one new one.

Some projects do come to mind, but not enough to use 10 sets, so I think I'll try to recover some of the costs.

[Vince]

70 quid wow.... you just blew your entire YEARLY TE budget in one shot ! 

and it's only March !  Can you remain abstinent for the next 9 months ?! Sounds like torture to me...

Just Googled the Vishay datasheet for the 534 series.. they look very nice indeed, nice score indeed.

Wire wound 5% 2 Watts at that, quite beefy.

10K quite useful I guess, not too low not too high a value... probably can be used in many applications.

[Specmaster]

I have these two meters on route to me, been after one of these for years, last time I used one of these was back in 1966 while at college, an alternative quality meter to the very common Avo, which was the Fluke of its time. Both listed as not working, plan is to try and make at least one good meter from them, and if I can get them both working, that would be grand.

[Vince]

They look weird... so weird that I am pretty sure I have already seen these... you must have posted pics of it at least once a few months ago.

Distinctive look (and design of the controls) for sure, you can't mistake it for anything else... they sure put though into their industrial design, and polished it.

The kind of design you either love or hate...

As for me, I find their did a nice job of the meter scale. There is polish / attention to detail, it's got a mirror which puts it in the high-end meters right there, and the touche of red and the fonts used look nice. 

[tggzzz]

I have these two meters on route to me, been after one of these for years, last time I used one of these was back in 1966 while at college, an alternative quality meter to the very common Avo, which was the Fluke of its time. Both listed as not working, plan is to try and make at least one good meter from them, and if I can get them both working, that would be grand.

I have a Selectest Super 50. It is my only later that can measure 3kV.

I'm discounting my 40kV Brandenburg meter, since it can only just register the difference between 2kV and 3kV. I'm ignoring my Testec HV probe, because I can't justify it to myself.

[Specmaster]

@Vince, no it wasn't me, I think it was Robert who posted pictures of these. Yes they do have a unique style and just about all of these large meters of that era had mirrors to eliminate reading errors and thus improve their accuracy, infact all 9 of my wobbly needle meters have mirrors, anything else is not a serious meter in my book.

[Specmaster]

I have these two meters on route to me, been after one of these for years, last time I used one of these was back in 1966 while at college, an alternative quality meter to the very common Avo, which was the Fluke of its time. Both listed as not working, plan is to try and make at least one good meter from them, and if I can get them both working, that would be grand.

I have a Selectest Super 50. It is my only later that can measure 3kV.

I'm discounting my 40kV Brandenburg meter, since it can only just register the difference between 2kV and 3kV. I'm ignoring my Testec HV probe, because I can't justify it to myself.

I have these two meters on route to me, been after one of these for years, last time I used one of these was back in 1966 while at college, an alternative quality meter to the very common Avo, which was the Fluke of its time. Both listed as not working, plan is to try and make at least one good meter from them, and if I can get them both working, that would be grand.

I have a Selectest Super 50. It is my only later that can measure 3kV.

I'm discounting my 40kV Brandenburg meter, since it can only just register the difference between 2kV and 3kV. I'm ignoring my Testec HV probe, because I can't justify it to myself.

Which model is your meter, these 2 Selectests will only read 2.5KV. I have 4 Avo 8 Model V which will read 3KV and these 2 that will read 5KV.

[salvagedcircuitry]

I was saving up for a used BMW i3...
But I can take a bike for the time being 



28 GHZ broken! I've never seen such a high bandwidth broken scope sold by Keysight's After-Hours ebay store
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194930153313

28 freggin gigahertz.

Warning: must be professionally broke to inquire 

I'll take one of these plz 

[Specmaster]

I was saving up for a used BMW i3...
But I can take a bike for the time being.



28 GHZ broken! I've never seen such a high bandwidth broken scope sold by Keysight's After-Hours ebay store
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194930153313

28 freggin gigahertz.

Warning: must be professionally broke to inquire 

Its broken and they want HOW much for it 

[mnementh]

   One here for Vince:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284715424647

165 Euros ?! It's a solid twice the market value ! 

It's a 553. Mine is a 554 hence much better specs and features, and paid 90 Euros for it ... and just a few days ago I saw another 554 priced at only 50 Euros !!! 
Obviously it was sold within a a 32th of a quarter of a third of a split pico second.... so I had no chance of getting it 

Ideally I would want a 556 but I don't even know if Metrix ever made them to begin with... I can't remember ever seeing one for sale anyhoo.

Yeah, I've never paid more than £16 including shipping for a Metrix DMM 

That's because he only ever paid for one METRIX meter... the one he's been tormenting you with.

mnem
And evidently, he still is...   

[salvagedcircuitry]

I was saving up for a used BMW i3...
But I can take a bike for the time being.



28 GHZ broken! I've never seen such a high bandwidth broken scope sold by Keysight's After-Hours ebay store
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194930153313

28 freggin gigahertz.

Warning: must be professionally broke to inquire 

Its broken and they want HOW much for it 

I usually lowball pretty hard on broken gear, but even so, 1/4 of a car is still 1/4 of a car. I am doing my best to not place an offer. I am hoping someone else here will make this disappear before I make a really stupid decision