Test Equipment Anonymous

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:21 am**

I repaired the Elenco XP-720 this evening. It was about as basic a repair as possible, just the one filter capacitor, but I took pictures and used the opportunity to spin up some test equipment in the process including that Fluke D802 since I thought it'd be fun to use the meter I was testing on that power supply to troubleshoot it for the repair. I'll do a separate post with the pictures from the repair job.

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 2:25 am**

I too had a Mend-it Monday project; though my work was considerably less electronical and much more visceral in nature. LOTS of percussive modification work, some drill-press pressed into service, and the expected amount of manly expletives while massaging the pieces into the right shape.

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Push Plow.jpg

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Last winter I put a big ol' crack in the body of my fat-daddy push plow; Of course I put off fixing it until I couldn't anymore, which was today, as we're expecting 4-10 inches of snow tonight & tomorrow. I vacillated over whether to fix the plow or drag the snowblower out of the back shed and get it running, but the decision was kindof made for me. I had to unbury the push shovel before I could even see the snowblower... so fixing it became today's project.

I think you'll find my choice of patch materials amusing...

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Push Plow2.jpg

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mnem
"One dragon-power engine on this thing... Are you sure that's enough?"

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 9:17 am**

Cool use of old hard drives, good job you never threw them away eh

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 9:18 am**

mnementh wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 2:25 am I think you'll find my choice of patch materials amusing...

My strangest choice of material was back in 1981: a bookshelf supported by a beer can.

I wanted some bookshelves in an alcove, and decided to make the supports from a wood moulding with a triangular cross section 2cm wide. But how to attach that to the wall? Screws through the support into the wall would have been visible, ugly, and would have compromised the wood's strength.

So, flatten the beer can into a shape 3cm wide with several layers. Screw that to the back of the moulding leaving 1cm above the top of the triangle and none below it. Screw the visible 1cm to the wall. Drop the 1.5cm thick bookshelf on top of the moulding, which hides the visible 1cm of beer can.

The cross section was thus:

Code: Select all

w
w  ssssssssss
w |ssssssssss
w |ssssssssss
+++ssssssssss
w |****
w +++*
w |**
w  * 
w

w=wall, |=beer can, +=screw, *=wood moulding, s=shelf

Worked nicely.

And who said ASCII art was dead

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:55 pm**

It finally happen. First significant snow this winter. It's been an unusually warm and wet (rain) winter thus far. Long range forecast for March indicates colder than normal and more snow. So it appears the weather will turn nasty before it finally warms up in April.

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 2:33 pm**

yesterday evening my brother sent me this picture from the virgin islands.

so i sent him my best guess as to what he had just witnessed.

but it turned out to just be a "twilight effect" from a spacex launch from florida.

wasn't there a rumor that elon was really an alien?

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 3:27 pm**

*gazes out the garage door at the carnage wrought overnight*
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carnage.jpg

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*closes garage door and makes some coffee*
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mnem
Fuck dat.

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 4:06 pm**

Specmaster wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 9:17 amCool use of old hard drives, good job you never threw them away eh

.

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Oh, those hard drives are long ago recycled into beer cans for tggzzz to use as construction materiel...

but why would a tinkerdwagon ever give up such loverly little perfectly-project-sized bits of stainless steel sheetmetal?
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I honestly can't imagine me ever doing such a thing...
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mnem

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* Photo courtesy of Teanonymous That Was... *sigh*

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:05 pm**

25 CPS wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:21 am

I repaired the Elenco XP-720 this evening. It was about as basic a repair as possible, just the one filter capacitor, but I took pictures and used the opportunity to spin up some test equipment in the process including that Fluke D802 since I thought it'd be fun to use the meter I was testing on that power supply to troubleshoot it for the repair. I'll do a separate post with the pictures from the repair job.

Is it a trick of the light or is that Fluke LCD bleeding?

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:53 pm**

That's a feature on those LCDs

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 7:17 pm**

It's made that way so Spara can still read it when he's half-cocked.

mnem
"I do things full-cocked or not at all." ~grand-dad

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 9:34 pm**

Here are some of our instruments featured in a vintage german report:

https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/swr-r ... zEyMDc0OTE

I think some of us could rebuild that device, at least the complex counting and waveform display

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2023 9:44 pm**

AVGresponding wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:05 pm
25 CPS wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:21 am

I repaired the Elenco XP-720 this evening. It was about as basic a repair as possible, just the one filter capacitor, but I took pictures and used the opportunity to spin up some test equipment in the process including that Fluke D802 since I thought it'd be fun to use the meter I was testing on that power supply to troubleshoot it for the repair. I'll do a separate post with the pictures from the repair job.
Is it a trick of the light or is that Fluke LCD bleeding?

It is. That's a common problem with the LCDs that Fluke used on meters of that era so I have some "Fluke 8020A LCD replacement" thread reading to do. It's the Fluke variation on the Agilent U1253A display longevity problem. There's always something...

Posted: **Thu Mar 02, 2023 8:43 pm**

Sometimes you absolutely need a flexible shaft screwdriver.

Sometimes you absolutely need an insulated screwdriver.

Sometimes you absolutely need a multimeter.

Posted: **Thu Mar 02, 2023 8:55 pm**

You know, I don't think I've ever used my flexible driver, but its there, in my toolkit should it ever be needed. My kids make fun of me for all the tools, meters, calculators etc that I buy, they just can't understand the logic, saying things like how many variations of anything does 1 person need. I always laugh at them and say that one day, that tool etc, might well save the day because the others for some reason or other won't do the job.

Now, if they ever do anything for themselves and their limited tools will not do the job, they raid my toolkit and thats when I remind them, that xyz tool just solved their problem for them

I guess the old saying is right, "you can't put an old head on young shoulders", they'll have to learn that for themselves.

Posted: **Thu Mar 02, 2023 9:16 pm**

The tool junkie (and TEA Addict's) mantra: It is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

-Pat

Posted: **Thu Mar 02, 2023 10:31 pm**

It depends on how much if costs, how specialised it is, and whether the opportunity to use it happens to arise.

I have a couple of flex drives and they have turned out to be the very thing on a couple of occasions in the last 20 years. I recall I was given them or rescued them from being thrown away.

Then there are pearl grabbers. I bought one in a pound store a long time ago, on impulse. I haven't seen one for years. Just a few times it's been the very thing.

Artery forceps are most excellent for all sorts of things. I have several pairs. I only use them a few times a year but when you need them, there's nothing quite the same.

I've stayed with friends and been asked to fix something. I said a multimeter would be necessary and a soldering iron would probably be needed. I may as well have asked for a magic wand and book of spells. How can civilised life possibly exist without these basic necessities? They seem to manage.

Posted: **Thu Mar 02, 2023 11:23 pm**

Pearl grabbers? A favorite tool for holding eeny-weeny screws while cutting to custom length with a Dremel. They're "a thing" with all the Chinesium vendors; available in kits of 2-6 for approx $10, even on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/pearl-grabber/s?k=pearl+grabber

This is one of my favorite "secret weapon" tools:

109500.jpg

https://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-190500-R ... B00UY11IFG

Fiskars 109500 Vorpal sewing scissors. These are the scissor parallel of an X-Acto knife; surgically sharp blades brought to a compound needle point, with enough leverage to cut toenails even at the tips or go through credit cards like paper. Shop around, you can also usually find them for approx $10.

mnem
"One two! One two! And through and through;
The Vorpal Blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head;
He went galumphing back..."

Posted: **Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:08 am**

A powerful poem that. If I thought they really were vorpal scissors I'd grab a few pairs before they are banned.

I hated Alice In Wonderland as a kid. Only later did I realise it wasn't really a kids' book. It was written by an academic mathematician who must have been well along the autistic spectrum. It's been suggested the bit about Alice taking substances and growing smaller and larger, celebrated by Jefferson Airplane in White Rabbit, is curiously similar to accounts of amanita mushroom poisoning.

It had vogue in the 19th century. There's a story that Queen Victoria was a fan and demanded an audience with Lewis Caroll (Charles Ludwidge Dodgson).
At the end she insisted that he should send her his very next book. Sure enough, six weeks later a book on vector algebra arrived for her delight. He vigorously denied the tale.

Posted: **Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:51 am**

It is my understanding that Lewis Caroll was somewhat inappropriately enamored of the girl in question, and the books were a tacitly approved venting of that frustration. The tale of Queen Victoria and the math book are apocryphal at best; it would have meant publicly admitting he was the same person as his fiction authorship pen name, and such conventions were not contravened lightly.

Certain types of smart people do not hold together well in circumstances of arbitrary & entrenched repression; that was literally the defining characteristic of the age.

mnem
I can relate.

Posted: **Fri Mar 03, 2023 7:44 am**

25 CPS wrote: ↑Thu Mar 02, 2023 8:43 pm
Sometimes you absolutely need a flexible shaft screwdriver.

Sometimes you absolutely need an insulated screwdriver.

Sometimes you absolutely need a multimeter.

Oooh! What kind of desk is that? I've not been into our large ones, mostly because it is not my side of work, at work, but they look similar in complexity. I do have been into them virtually, and looked at what kind of hackery the vendor built. Baling wire and chewing gum, sometimes..

My "flexible screwdriver" story is our clothes dryer. The condensate evacuation pump sits in the lid of the water holding tank. The lid is behind the drive motor and under the drum. My iFixit kit has a flexible shaft that's just right.

Posted: **Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:19 pm**

Zenith said "I've stayed with friends and been asked to fix something. I said a multimeter would be necessary and a soldering iron would probably be needed. I may as well have asked for a magic wand and book of spells. How can civilised life possibly exist without these basic necessities? They seem to manage."

You don't carry a DMM in the car all the time? Shame on you!

Posted: **Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:21 pm**

How not to run a company.. the demise of a true giant in the electronics world, Philips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE58YisgFeQ

So thats how I came to be the proud owner of a combiscope, they closed down a lab they used to have in Cambridge and everything was auctioned off.

Posted: **Sat Mar 04, 2023 9:58 pm**

Not the first in electronics though, whatever happened to RCA? "Empire of the Air" is an interesting book.

I heard that for much of their time, lamps kept the rest of the company afloat.

Posted: **Sun Mar 05, 2023 1:36 am**

Zenith wrote: ↑Sat Mar 04, 2023 9:58 pm Not the first in electronics though, whatever happened to RCA? "Empire of the Air" is an interesting book.

I heard that for much of their time, lamps kept the rest of the company afloat.

It's funny you brought up RCA because yesterday, while I was shopping in Canadian Tire, I saw took a picture of this:

RCA is another example of a venerable old name that's bought and sold and slapped on anything now.

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