Equipting a test bench

Corian. Great stuff.

a HUGE ESD no-no. Do your

Do I have to give all the money back?

John

Not for electronic PCB work, dumbfuck.

Suitable for HV work, but NOT for ANY of the kind of stuff you claim to make.

Your grasp of the things that matter always seems to ignore those things that you were never smart enough to grasp the depth of. How convenient for you. How sad for your customers.

You probably do not even know what the term 'infant mortality' means.

Sure he does. It's what happened to your mother's only son.

I used to do most of my funky timing things with a little box containing a 24-pin narrow DIP socket and a bunch of SMB connectors. I'd draw the timing, burn a 22V10, and press on to the next problem. Orcad PLD V for DOS--good medicine.

Zero-power PALs swing right to the rails like normal CMOS, and are thus good for analogue things. I built a cute gizmo once using seven solar cells all connected to a single TIA, with a zero-power PAL with tri-state outputs driving the other ends. (It was for closed-loop control of lithographic line width, using the diffraction pattern of the latent image and controlling the length of the post-exposure bake. Worked great.)

I'll have to see if I can find a decent programmer (preferably dac-per-pin) for cheapish. My old one was an Advin Pilot. Any suggestions?

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

One can be indispensable if you're trouble-shooting somebody _else_'s design. And if I'm getting paid by the hour, what do I care how long it takes to hook up? ;-)

But I'm only a tech, what do I know? ;-)

When I was interviewing for the video game/pinball/jukebox repair job, I told the guy, "Well, when a game gets fixed, it has to be tested, and where else would I be able to play games for free? ;-)"

I got the job. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Wow! Paper towels _and_ Kimwipes!

Lah-di-dah!

BTW, do you buy the "select-a-size" towels? :-)

Cheers! Rich

The Galep4 or 5 from Conitec

These programmers will program anything! And they have excellent support. I think my Galep3 is close to 15 years old but it is still supported by their software today.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
                     "If it doesn\'t fit, use a bigger hammer!"
--------------------------------------------------------------

Now I don't feel so bad that I got a 47x boom scope for the bench!..

We see no evidence of a bathtub curve these days. Field failure rates are low, far below MIL-217 or Bellcore calcs, and failures seem to be pretty uniform over time. Most failures are because of some sort of abuse.

John

And single-ended real wood Q-tips. And *three* different sizes of solder-wick! Eat your heart out.

Mais oui.

John

If you ever want a change of scene, I have a friend who buys/refurbs/sells slot machines in Los Vegas, several thousand a month. He made a fortune in Silicon valley and moved to Nevada for tax reasons, got bored, started the slot thing, and is making another fortune. Some people are like that.

John

Would he relocate me (~$50.00 on Greyhound, plus maybe a couple hundred bucks traveling money (food, booze, cigs)) and put me up until I make enough to pay my own rent?

Thanks, Rich

aka Zero observance of ESD precautions.

I certainly don't feel so bad about having a 3/16" thick, carbon impregnated throughout the medium, absolute proper dissipation resistance, 30"x 25" ESD mat with a grounding node and cord on it sitting on my bench. Also, every time a company I work for uses a panel of it, I grab whatever scraps they do not want.

It is the same way we concerned electrical engineering types used to collect the carbon rich dissipative foam so we could move chips back and forth around the lab.

A proper electronic workstation is not just about what your gear pile has in it. The furniture must be properly outfitted, and that is first and foremost rule.

Same type of dopes that would sit on a pool table, or shoot at balls other than the cue ball.

The first rule is respect the equipment, and that is always the first rule that gets thrown out.

Just not by me.

Florida that bad, eh?

My production people use proper ESD procedures on all shippable gear. But we sell a lot of VME modules, which are raw PC boards with front panels, and a customer can handle all the exposed stuff any way he wants.

See... no enclosure...

But as noted, our field failure rates are well below industry standards, roughly 5:1 below Bellcore calcs. I think MTBF is dominated by design, not parts reliability. Most parts are pretty well ESD hardened these days anyhow, with a few known exceptions. I don't think I've ever zapped a part at my office workbench.

And I'm not sure I believe in "latent" ESD damage.

Besides, I've long ago acquired the instincts to keep myself un-charged and things equipotential. And humidity is usually so high here that static zaps are rare. And I don't build or test production stuff.

John

No, one cannot!

So what. Also SEE the ESD bag it came it, and see the precautions the manual for it no doubt declares.

Your dopeyness factor just bumped up an order of magnitude.

So what? If any of it ever gets used in a mission critical situation, you should not be taking the chance to begin with or at all, nor should you attempt to diminish the dangers of electrostatic fields and charged bodies around circuit card assemblies.

Okie dokie.

Scary.

You ain't real bright sometimes, John.

I do not think you would even know. There doesn't have to be a noticeable 'zap' as you call it. as little as a 20 volt charge 'on' you without a smock would do it. And yes, without a smock, you will carry a charge, and build one with every step and arm movement.

Which makes one wonder about whether you are aware of just how easy it is to damage components with ESD.

Here... Try this... I found a pretty good one after a bit of hunting. Tell me what you think about what this dude knows.

Very well put description of a good regimen for one to keep. You do not appear to keep it, however. Easy test... Smock? Strap? MAT?

I always "touch the mat" when I get to a bench. Then, I "hook-up" for low voltage stuff. Ideally the ionizing evacuation fan for soldering, or (and) even an overhead cascade source at the bench. One should also always have a smock on, because it keep fields inside you, the charge receptacle.

We are at like 40% to 65%, and again, one does NOT have to "see" OR "hear" a "zap" for there to have been an exchange of electrons from a charged body into a circuit element.

There is a point at which the humidity is too high, so our entire lab is controlled, though it has been running a little toward the high end lately.

Oh... I thought that was your home bench. I wondered why you wouldn't want to also take every precaution at home as well.

That's at work? Wow.

I just don't look my rugged, manly best in a smock. And I don't understand how a smock has any effect on ESD at all. Please explain how a smock works.

You really have a thing going for smocks. All our boards are assembled by naked young girls sitting in tubs of tepid water. That seems to work pretty well.

John

Is your job application online?

{;-)

Jim