Home lab suggestions?

Well, after raising two very fine daughters who both turned out to be gifted in fuzzy subjects such as languages and history and bunk like that, my son is showing signs of technical aptitude and interest.

Therefore, I'm putting together a lowish-budget home lab off ebay, with an eye to doing some Jacob's ladders or Tesla coils or stuff like that there, with maybe an electro-optical thing now and again, such as a machine to detect deer and hit them with paintballs. ;)

So far, I have:

Tek 475A 250 MHz scope with DMM;

2x HP 6286 20V, 10A power supplies;

1x HP 8013B 50 MHz pulser;

HP 400A AC Voltmeter;

Various Simpson meters and Fluke DVMs and such like.

Enough probes and test leads for now.

I already owned the DVM, but so far the rest have cost me about $400 all told. Some of this stuff I had to get my second line manager's approval on, when I bought it for work long ago! Nice old test equipment is monstrous cheap.

I'm bidding on various HP universal counters and Exact function generators, which I like. Haven't got enough dough for a spectrum analyzer, unfortunately. Remaining budget is ~$400.

So which of your favourite old instruments have I forgotten?

Cheers,

Phil

Reply to
Phil Hobbs
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What sort of mechanical tools do you have? A descent bench vice, pillar drill and assorted blunt drills

and a variac

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

HP5245L counter with various plug-ins.

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John Fields
Professional Circuit Designer
Reply to
John Fields

Good point. Don't have enough of those things, especially no drill press. I have a Panavise and hand drills, but that isn't the same. Variacs I've been looking at, but I'm mostly going to be starting from good-quality DC power, at least initially, so I can do the "gradual smoke test" with the panel knobs.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Not exactly "instruments" but you'll need some breadboards, good lighting, probably a magnifier, complete set of hand tools, electric drill (maybe a drill press), tin snips, chassis punches, etc. too to actually build something.

Tim.

Reply to
Tim Shoppa

Paypal for online ordering?

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

I have most of that stuff already, thanks, as well as a reasonable stock of electronic parts. Chassis punches I don't have, but I find I rarely use them at work so I can probably get along without them for awhile. Breadboards I usually make dead-bug style, on a piece of Cu-clad board mounted to the lid of the box via the BNC connectors. Of course I usually use Lemo connectors for power, which I'm not going to do for home projects.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
Phil Hobbs

I've used those, maybe 25 years ago. IIRC it's a 50-MHz counter with harmonic mixers for different frequency ranges--is that right? Nixie tube display, anyway.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
Phil Hobbs

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Yup, and a noisy fan to boot, but good and cheap!
Reply to
John Fields

In message , dated Wed, 2 Aug 2006, Phil Hobbs writes

Use cone cutters or step cutters in your pillar drill (carefully!) Much more sensible than chassis punches. Even for octal tube holders. (;-)

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OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk
2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely.
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Reply to
John Woodgate

And when it comes to lighting, don't use fluorescents if you are going to be working on sensitive circuits. One place I worked was a nightmare because all the bench lighting was fluorescent and it was impossible to breadboard high gain amplifiers anywhere near them.

Dirk

Reply to
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax

Hard for D-shell cutouts, though!

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
Phil Hobbs

What are you supposed to do your soldering with?

Crimp tools and terminals are real cool too. I can't believe how many years I spent thinking before I did electronics for a job that all terminals had to be soldered. Now I save loads of time and get better results with crimps. Duh!

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Good day!

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Reply to
Chris Carlen

cheap but meaningful:

a hene laser, a photodiode

a PMSA kit to learn RF:

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a permanent link to Wenzel's tech-lib

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some software to do a audio FFT on a sound card and a cheap PC with qbasic or liberty basic to learn bit banging.

for field and bench work I find a LBT to be invaluable

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a simple chip programmer, mine is a Iguanalabs PG302. Does 2051 and AVR

Steve Roberts

Reply to
osr

Step drills are great, yeah, but I personally find it more satisfying to use a good punch.

Especially for those rectangular and square holes!

But some people really like making bazillions of little aluminum chips (not too mention when the drill grabs your 19 inch chassis and starts spinning it around on the drill press) and I'll let them use their step drills all they want.

Nibblers are great for those holes that aren't round, too!

Tim.

Reply to
Tim Shoppa

snip

I thought that you would have a CNC laser( borrowed from work) at home :-)

Nice to see you posting here again

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 13:37:00 -0400, Phil Hobbs wrote: ...

You've already got WAY more equipment than you need for a starter lab. :-)

Instead of buying more equipment, I'd say to look into the workspace. Where will the lab be? What kind of workbench? Shelves? Storage? Lighting?

And a minimal sat of hand tools would be a whole set of screwdrivers, a utility pliers and a needle-nose pliers, maybe two different sizes, a large and small diagonal cutter - a precision dikes is way cool for doing snazzy perfboard work - soldering iron, magnifier, third-hand, static-dissipative surface, an outlet strip or three, and so on and so on and so on...

Have Fun! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Hello Chris,

It depends. My first car (Citroen 2CV) had a 6V system and tons of electrical problems. Then I soldered all those crimp connections and the grand total of electrical faults over 6 years was zero. By then the car had become unroadworthy as determined at the mandatory German TUEV check-up.

Of course, I wouldn't have done that with RoHS solder :-)

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
Reply to
Joerg

One word: Nibbler. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Hi,

Sounds like a nice setup so far. I wish I had that kind of dad when I was growing up.

I agree with most all the suggestions above.

My additional 2 cents: Buy an anti-static mat for your bench or table-top, and a couple of wrist straps -- not so much for the high-power tesla-coil-type experiments, but for the smaller stuff later-on. You'll save you and your kid hours of head-scratching when something doesn't work correctly, and it turns out to be a zapped input on an IC.

Good Luck, I hope your son gets "in" to it.

Tom

Reply to
tlbs101

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