Test Equipment Anonymous

In the world of music synths there are several models from the 1980s that have issues relating to the degradation of epoxy resin, either in hybrid modules or on capacitors. The Marconi's oscillator did have some sort of sealant or adhesive around some parts, possibly to help with microphonics or ma...

Had to lookup "Stilton". Never heard of it but if it's anything like other bleu cheeses I would probably like it. A good Stilton is the king of cheeses. Wonderful stuff, although it gives me a migraine. Unfortunately, Stilton tends to be a bit variable, unlike the French, Italian, and Dan...

No wind noticed as yet; seems safe enough. Pan was hard work to wash, though.

We have just had a really nice bowl of soup (two actually, because we both went back for seconds). Would make six restaurant servings. I medium onion, finely chopped 3 medium King Edwards potatoes coarsely chopped (any old potato would do, but we had these left over from Christmas) 1 large leek chop...

Zenith wrote: ↑Tue Jan 06, 2026 1:46 pm The plug powers a docking station which the robot returns to.

Gotcha. So not all of what we see in the still is mobile.

But they appear to be tethered to the lift by their power leads? Or did they unplug themselves before delivery?

What were they thinking of in making the thing look like that? Any right-minded person encountering such an object with its silly "face" is going to want to do something gratuitously offensive to it. A child would draw a moustache on it. A teenager would probably add some other bits of ana...

What they needed was a nice Routemaster double-decker bus. Many, many years ago, there was a feature on "Blue Peter" about Routemaster busses that showed how they were tested. Apparently, they had to not tip over even if the upper deck was full and the lower empty and the bus tipped to an ...

Hopefully, Newbury won't be cancelled this time; I always look forward to that one. I can't see when the Chippenham one is due.

mansaxel wrote: ↑Tue Dec 30, 2025 9:53 am If you need more than 3 1/2 digits, you have done a marginal design

Or, you're trying science the real way.

I'd agree with that. What I'm doing at the moment is more physics than electronics.

If you are contemplating publishing a paper on this you must have an idea of what the requirements are for the instruments used. It must depend on the size of the effect compared to likely instrument errors and noise. What would you expect to see if this was published by someone else? What would pe...

"What are you trying to do?" Good question. It all started out as a hobby... Then I was exposed to much better test equipment at work and an arms race between home and work benches started. But it's now a bit more than a hobby, and I habitually run computer-controlled experiments taking da...

As has been noted elsewhere, someone with one meter knows what the voltage is, yet with two you don't. Obviously, that means the more the better. I have six 6-digit DMMs, and three 7-digit. But which (if any) is right? Last year, I carefully tested them all at 10V from an (uncalibrated) Fluke 341A v...

But he doesn't look terribly happy about that hat.

This morning, one of ours was convinced that my red berry and apple crumble was something she would like. I've offered it to her before and she knows it's not really kitty food, but if I'm eating it, it must be worth investigating.

And do look up "Doramad" (radioactive toothpaste). There were also radioactive suppositories sold to improve a man's "vigour". Quite the reverse.

But my friend had an old fob watch that was more radioactive. It was sent to Harwell to be destroyed :) To be added to low-level waste. There have been many accidents with low-level radioactivity. The women who painted luminous numerals on WW2 aircraft instruments used to lick their brushes to get ...

"Give me some of that. Yum, yum!"

Or, "That looks way better than the rubbish I get served."

Or (looking at a bird), "I'll get you, sunshine!"

One I read as a kid, and can see on the bookshelf, is A Random Walk In Science. https://www.mehmetgokturk.com/files/random-walk-in-science-weber-1973.pdf Ditto The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, by MacKay. https://archive.org/details/B-001-014-489/page/n24/mode/1up I have "A Random Walk In Science&qu...

"Clearly not very much happened there, e.g. no nearby village was evacuated... One of the simpler selenium-rich compounds, for example, is carbon diselenide, an exact homolog of the carbon dioxide in your breath and in your glass of soda. Instead of a gas, the selenide is an oily liquid with a...

Took a bit of looking at to work out what I was seeing. I don't think I have anything as bizarre as that.

I discovered this today. Something to aspire to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ODwgX_KkQ&t=12s Cop a load of her equipment shelves! And if you look at her website: https://www.tatjavanvark.nl/projects.html The stuff there is even more amazing. As a friend of mine said, "Humbling".

It was a cultural thing. Yes, it's cultural. And faulty logic; "Look how busy that department is, they're always needing more test equipment. But that other department can't be doing much because we never hear from them at budget meetings; perhaps that's where we should look for redundancies.&...

As you say, a lot of brass. I borrowed an Agilent electrometer for evaluation when I was looking to buy an electrometer for myself. The Agilent was much nicer to use. Hugely nicer. But... It didn't do the essential thing of having low and stable input leakage current. So I bought the Keithley despit...

I suppose so, but if you are in the world of £20,000 femtoammeters... Gulp! Have they shot up in price? List price of a Keithley 6517B is now £11,300 + VAT. Wildly expensive, but not (yet) £20,000. So I looked up a Keithley 6430; £26,300. Yikes! I bought one of those for work a few years ago. The m...

Agreed, the sales of triax parts will be small. But £80.82 for a triax cap is insulting the customer. A few years ago, they were £15 each, expensive, but reasonable in the light of needing the machine that mills out the lug holes to be set for three rather than two. Other than that, those caps are i...