Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Zenith]

Just google 1.6 GHz Skinwalker ranch ... it's all BS.

What did he mean by me creating a sound that can be seen on a scope? He wants to observe a signal like they did that is transmitting sound, so he can see it for himself. I said no problem, come over tomorrow and we'll set my spectrum analyzer to the AM or FM broadcast band. Knock yourself out LOL.

There's an appetite for this sort of gee whizz tosh. "Ghost Hunters" and "Monster Hunters" - neither of which have caught a ghost or a monster. Secrets of lost civilisations and ancient aliens....

The History Channel episode on Skinwalker Ranch I saw had scientists with a pile of equipment, measuring the resistance of the soil with probes set a few metres apart. Then there were far-fetched speculations about what these measurements might possibly mean.

[capt bullshot]

Playing with GPSDO and GPS receiver, measuring time difference between PPS outputs, the proper TEA way:

[bd139]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

[Specmaster]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

[AVGresponding]

Not his finest hour.

[vk6zgo]

If its a parasite stopper (common in tube circuits) the resistor is in parallel with the coil.
Otherwise its a *coil former* . I personally never saw something like this in the wild.

There are actually two types of "inductors wound around resistors", one being a low value resistor, as described, & the other case, a very high value resistor used simply as a coil form. The latter usually have many more turns than the former.

The ones of the former kind I have seen, usually have the inductor wound as if to be "self supporting", with a largish diameter compared to that of the resistor.
Sometimes they don't even make them concentric, just wire them in parallel, although the coil is still supported by the resistor leads.

[bd139]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

I can open most stuff without destroying it. He was using the wrong tools and the wrong method.

[factory]

let's play a game.
Spot the gorilla, umm, idiot, umm failure ...

Plug J137 back in and bingo 

umm, no. look at the jumper wire and the trace that is burned away. a new power board ist 350€, a pinball repair company charged them 2500 for that jumper wire.
The could at least have repaired the trace properly

Not to mention J128, 129, 131, and 132. It's not that unusual to have unused connectors, these boards will be common to multiple different machines. That "repair" is UGLY. Why the heck didn't they just solder a wire bridge to the track?   
I can see the value in a big loop during troubleshooting, to get a current clamp in there, if other means of measuring it aren't practical, but you don't leave it like that once you're done.

Also J133 may need re-seating. Bloody Molex IDC's... 

Aaaaaand... the screw is behind the keyhole slot in the board at the top right, meaning the board is flapping in the breeze, risking stress fractures at the other mounting points.

Lastly, that braided earthing strap really should be either tinned or crimped/sleeved at the end to prevent it fraying, but I'm probably nit-picking at this point.

I'm not exactly a fan of those Pancon Mas-Con IDCs either, they burn up just as well as the Molex IDCs, on the stuff I repair at work. I've repaired two units at work recently with the same blown OVP fault, which was caused by the IDC on the vehicle, I'm expecting to see another two, as the customer kept trying more units, until they released it was a wiring problem. I always check the wiring & condition of the IDC and the solder joints of the board connectors.

David

[Specmaster]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

I can open most stuff without destroying it. He was using the wrong tools and the wrong method.

Yeah, it wasn't one of his best days I admit.

[dl6lr]

Just google 1.6 GHz Skinwalker ranch ... it's all BS.

What did he mean by me creating a sound that can be seen on a scope? He wants to observe a signal like they did that is transmitting sound, so he can see it for himself. I said no problem, come over tomorrow and we'll set my spectrum analyzer to the AM or FM broadcast band. Knock yourself out LOL.

There's an appetite for this sort of gee whizz tosh. "Ghost Hunters" and "Monster Hunters" - neither of which have caught a ghost or a monster. Secrets of lost civilisations and ancient aliens....

The History Channel episode on Skinwalker Ranch I saw had scientists with a pile of equipment, measuring the resistance of the soil with probes set a few metres apart. Then there were far-fetched speculations about what these measurements might possibly mean.

[AVGresponding]

let's play a game.
Spot the gorilla, umm, idiot, umm failure ...

Plug J137 back in and bingo 

umm, no. look at the jumper wire and the trace that is burned away. a new power board ist 350€, a pinball repair company charged them 2500 for that jumper wire.
The could at least have repaired the trace properly

Not to mention J128, 129, 131, and 132. It's not that unusual to have unused connectors, these boards will be common to multiple different machines. That "repair" is UGLY. Why the heck didn't they just solder a wire bridge to the track?   
I can see the value in a big loop during troubleshooting, to get a current clamp in there, if other means of measuring it aren't practical, but you don't leave it like that once you're done.

Also J133 may need re-seating. Bloody Molex IDC's... 

Aaaaaand... the screw is behind the keyhole slot in the board at the top right, meaning the board is flapping in the breeze, risking stress fractures at the other mounting points.

Lastly, that braided earthing strap really should be either tinned or crimped/sleeved at the end to prevent it fraying, but I'm probably nit-picking at this point.

I'm not exactly a fan of those Pancon Mas-Con IDCs either, they burn up just as well as the Molex IDCs, on the stuff I repair at work. I've repaired two units at work recently with the same blown OVP fault, which was caused by the IDC on the vehicle, I'm expecting to see another two, as the customer kept trying more units, until they released it was a wiring problem. I always check the wiring & condition of the IDC and the solder joints of the board connectors.

David

Thermal cycling causes no end of trouble with every IDC I've ever seen. It's a great idea for production efficiency, a lousy one for long term reliability.

[dl6lr]

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

Most of those devices charge a low lithium battery at a very small rate in the milliamps range and monitors if they come up again. It takes hours with no obvious progress. This has not been done, so this is just an assumption that the µC did not repond to charge requests.

[AVGresponding]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

I can open most stuff without destroying it. He was using the wrong tools and the wrong method.

Yeah, it wasn't one of his best days I admit.

That manky old screwdriver had me wincing and looking away. He even had a spudger and didn't use it!

I would have completely removed the battery, negative first and always first. When he was waving the thing around with the positive wire flapping around in the breeze, just waiting for it to spark off the board and completely fuckerise it, I had to look away again!

[GreyWoolfe]

20% of any Bernstein, Erem or Lindstrom catalogue content.
25% of any Wiha, Wera, Knipex, Xcelite, PB or OK/Jonard catalogue content
as well as 10 hand tools not included in the above which represent a new value of 100$ or € each.

I don't know about the exact percentages, but I definitely have Lindstrom, Wiha, Wera, Knipex, and Xcelite stuff in my toolbox(es).  Not sure I have anything that retails for more than $100 each though. Which is probably a Good Thing. 

The most of anything I have is Xcelite 99. I probably have a few dozen driver bits about 7 handles including 3 of the ooooold skool ratcheting handles that I paid way too much money for.  Bought them all used, paid $35 USD for 1 and $55 USD apiece for the other 2.  Xcelite lives on my workbench, in my 2 toolkits in the company van and in my rifle case.  I have a bigger rolling tool chest in my office than I have seen in some peoples' garage when we are doing the yard sale thing.  I have learned though that military legal size 4 drawer filing cabinets make great corded power tool storage.

It will probably water your eyes when I tell you that I bought the BIG Xcelite foldout toolkit complete for 35€+postage. It had a very blurry picture of the incomparable ugly brown case and was titled 'old american toolkit'. It was completely unused, with the protective cushioning still in place.
Since then, I converted it further with a US pattern hammer, a set of Craftsman ignition wrenches, several of the premium quality Xcelite pliers and tweezers, a GCE alignment tool kit and a NSN-specified inhex kit and drift punch kit. I also have the option of removing the fixed nutdrivers, as I have found both metric and imperial Series 99 kits. Also added some stuff from Ullman, a Milspec Weller kit for 115V and another Weller iron for 230V.
Last thing I need for it are the series 99 torx blades. And I have a HP DMM with Muller and Pomona accessories residing in it.
Voila - totally American, aren't we?

To me, that's jammy git territory.  I have been using the Xcelite 99 series for about 20 years.  It makes the most sense for the space savings as I don't want to carry a silly large tool bag.  Both tool bags in the company van are identical Husky 14" and they are for working on different sets of equipment.  I have bigger, including a Jensen field service briefcase but they are more aggravation than they are worth.  I could actually use the Jensen in place of one of the bags but for that equipment, I work in a very much space constrained environment and it's not practical.  I also have some pliers, wire cutters, fixed nut drivers and a couple of custom extended length hex drivers to service equipment we had deployed in the past.  Not sure if Xcelite made them or the equipment company made them. I have both standard and security torx bits.  I don't actually have sets, just what I have built up over the years per need and some I inherited from the wife of a dear friend that passed away several years ago.

[AVGresponding]

I liked this one from Techmoan today:

[Specmaster]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

I can open most stuff without destroying it. He was using the wrong tools and the wrong method.

Yeah, it wasn't one of his best days I admit.

That manky old screwdriver had me wincing and looking away. He even had a spudger and didn't use it!

I would have completely removed the battery, negative first and always first. When he was waving the thing around with the positive wire flapping around in the breeze, just waiting for it to spark off the board and completely fuckerise it, I had to look away again!

Yeah, he is normally far better than that performance, like I said, not one of his best days.

[factory]

Well I failed to win the crusty HP 34750A/34702A DMM a few weeks back, but did find a nicer looking one for not too much on ePay USA soon after. It was marked as "Delay due to major event" on the 23rd by Hermesworld (used by GSP) and I was getting concerned that meant it was lost, but thankfully it turned up this morning. 
It looks in almost perfect condition from the outside, OK rear foot plastic failure as usual.


Most of the buttons of the 34702A were rattling about inside when I unpacked it, I failed to picture this before. 




Inside of the 34750A not so good, burnt rectifier for the ±12V supply & signs of failed of repair, the reference hybrid has been robbed.








Worryingly the OVP zener for the +12V (CR25 appears to have not been soldered on one side, not sure if this is due to very careful de-soldering of it left the factory like this, the +12V supply is used by both halves of this snap-on DMM system.




Hope I can make a working one, out of the two sets I now have.

David

[bd139]

Is that an FR2 board I see in there? 

Fingers crossed a replacement ref can be made.

Off to watch Minions now 

[AVGresponding]

No new test gear around here for a while, aside from picking up one of those Micsig 700V differential probes. Those things, by the way, are fairly nice and are a very handy utility for the price.

But.. I think I need to join "Hand Tools Anonymous" now. For some reason my addiction has shifted to wrenches, ratchets, hex bits, screwdrivers, etc. lately. Damn Youtube "tool review" channels. Every time I start watching those I find out about some new tool brand I wasn't familiar with and immediately a thread kicks in somewhere in my brain going "Hey, I need to by some of their stuff to try out."  Now I have a whole box full of Icon and Tekton wrenches, Vessel screwdrivers, Wiha screwdrivers, etc. 

Dagnabit. How am I supposed to afford more test gear as long as this keeps up?!?  Then again... what other test gear could I possibly need? OTOH, what other hand tools could I possibly need?

 

I'm not sure you are yet eligible to join. There are some serious thresholds involved. Its not as easy as declaring yourself a TEA fellow.  You would have to own at least two out of the following:
10% of any 80s Belzer catalogue content.
20% of any Bernstein, Erem or Lindstrom catalogue content.
25% of any Wiha, Wera, Knipex, Xcelite, PB or OK/Jonard catalogue content
as well as 10 hand tools not included in the above which represent a new value of 100$ or € each.
You could claim additional points, if:
- your metric wrenches span a 1:10 size ratio (i.e. 3.2...32mm)
- your imperial wrenches are in 1/64" steps
- you have at least 3 different cross-slot screwdriver types (Philips, Pozidrive, JIS, R&P)
- you can show the same tweezer (Swiss code) in 4 different materials

Feel free to point out achievements you claim as being equivalent. And show your tools!

Tsk... you missed out several premium tool brands. I believe someone else has mentioned Facom, but not Britool (now owned by Facom), Beta, and KTC, to name but three.

[Specmaster]

Is that an FR2 board I see in there? 

Fingers crossed a replacement ref can be made.

Off to watch Minions now 

What, is there a new one then?

[mnementh]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

No, this guy doesn't understand that LiPos are not the same as Pb or Nixx batteries, and you just cannot treat them the same in a consumer electronics device that Biff the jock-itch MBA and Shannara the useless PA with 3" long fake nails are going to be using every day.

Those 1d10ts (and the inevitable lawsuits they represent) are the users a major manufacturer has to have in mind when they design something; but sadly, the demand for ever-smaller and more complicated electronic dooflinkeys makes LiPo power the only way to get adequate power density.

He simply doesn't know how modern commodity Lixx batteries work. The ODP lockout function is deliberate, as a safety measure: a LiPo battery that goes down below a certain voltage is dangerous if you attempt to recharge it. Charging a LiPo that has over-discharged is the likeliest way to have a catastrophic fiery failure in normal use.

 Just because it's not visibly bloaty does not mean the internal structure is intact, and no internal shorts in the paper-thin plates/electrolyte. I've been working with high-current LiPos for decades... and the only times I've ever had a fire was when recharging a pack I knew had been over-discharged.

So no, the horror is not that this POS electronic device stopped working when the battery got below the MFR's safe Over Discharge limit... the horror is that this moron thought it was okay to recharge that LiPo battery rather than replace it, and gave it back to the owner thinking he had done him a favor rather than hand him a ticking time bomb.

Yes, you've all seen me do the "jump-start a over-discharged LiPo" thing; my Nexus Tablet was a prime example. But there's a difference between doing it for yourself as a diag step, knowing the risks you are taking, vs doing it for someone else and being dead chuffed at your own cleverness.

mnem

[Brumby]

Is that an FR2 board I see in there? 

Fingers crossed a replacement ref can be made.

Off to watch Minions now 

What, is there a new one then?

Minions: The Rise of Gru

[Specmaster]

This is a bit painful to watch...

Fucks sake did he just use a Sharpie to cover up the damage he did to the case opening it? 

Yes he did, but saying that, what else was he to do? When you're working blind, things do go wrong. On the plus side, he did get it back working again. It like Vince says, consumer crap, not really designed to be serviceable and a crap design anyway, there should be a law against making stuff like that, designed to fail if the battery gets too low with no way to recharge it. 

No, this guy doesn't understand that LiPos are not the same as Pb or Nixx batteries, and you just cannot treat them the same in a consumer electronics device that Biff the jock-itch MBA and Shannara the useless PA with 3" long fake nails are going to be using every day.

He simply doesn't know how modern commodity Lixx batteries work. The ODP lockout function is deliberate, as a safety measure: a LiPo battery that goes down below a certain voltage is dangerous if you attempt to recharge it. Charging a LiPo that has over-discharged is the likeliest way to have a catastrophic fiery failure in normal use.

 Just because it's not visibly bloaty does not mean the internal structure is intact, and no internal shorts in the paper-thin plates/electrolyte. I've been working with high-current LiPos for decades... and the only times I've ever had a fire was when recharging a pack I knew had been over-discharged.

So no, the horror is not that this POS electronic device stopped working when the battery got below the MFR's safe Over Discharge limit... the horror is that this moron thought it was okay to recharge that LiPo battery rather than replace it, and gave it back to the owner thinking he had done him a favor rather than hand him a ticking time bomb.

Yes, you've all seen me do the "jump-start a over-discharged LiPo" thing; my Nexus Tablet was a prime example. But there's a difference between doing it for yourself as a diag step, knowing the risks you are taking, vs doing it for someone else and being dead chuffed at your own cleverness.

mnem

In that case, shouldn't there be a warning to that effect on the device, or at the very least in the user manual. Even better to design such a device with a wall wart as the primary power source 

[factory]

Is that an FR2 board I see in there? 

Fingers crossed a replacement ref can be made.

Off to watch Minions now 

Yes something like FR2 for the 34702A DMM half, it's also used in the voltmeter board for the 5326B mentioned a few days back.

The HP 34750A reference seems to be ±1V, according to the page showing the test board, which I have. 


But the 34740A uses discrete zeners & transistors and a custom resistor network instead.


Might not be a terminal problem after all, also need to buy another 2.5MHz crystal, forgot the US 60Hz units use 3MHz for the clock.

David

[Ero-Shan]

I really need to get all that sorting sorted out ... But I can't put up my new TE for the photo shoots until I'm mostly done. There simply isn't any space left. Sorting and neat packaging ought to give me a back a little. At least that's the plan.

Today I took care of the other end of 4 mm connections - the jacks. Until now, I had a box with the contacts and one with the sheaths. With the new arrivals, the total number has about quadrupled, so I decided to separate into bins by color.
First, however, I had to remove the left-over wire pigtails sticking out from behind (most of them are used ones). This in turn necessitates pulling of the sheath from the center piece (stud? - I'll use that from now on), a terrible job.

About half of them had the wires soldered to the studs, as it is exceptionally easy to loose the worm screws: with thick wires you need to unscrew them until they (almost) fall out. And the guys making those cables couldn't be bothered looking for the lost screw, it seems.
But even if you don't loose them, they easily break owing to the slit head. Hirschmann also makes genuine solder studs, however (hope my cheap camera shows enough detail):



Now, heating up the studs takes time and a bit of force, so the thing should be held securely without sinking ever more heat. When I was almost done, I had the right idea. Why did it take so long? Oh dear oh dear. I built this little helper about 40 years ago (the german electronics magazine 'ELO' proposed such a thing), and it is still my favorite 3rd hand. But it never occurred to me that an extremely simple modification, courtesy of a 4 mm drill, would make my life so much easier. Until today. And since the chuck of my drill press wouldn't let me bore the holes where I wanted them, I just made a new one. Dead simple, but extremely handy for soldering those 4 mm connectors!



Now all is sorted out, but of course there's the recurring problem: How can I shrink it such that it fits into a 6x4 box (the yellow ones are 2x1)? Too big by 10 unit squares.



Guess that means another box with the leftover sockets from Thursday to go into backing storage.

Somehow I'm a bit reluctant to buy any new 4 mm connectors.