Fritzing ??

That was a direct-drive reversing diesel, no? The ships I worked on were all steam turbines. Diesels and turbines both vibrate a lot. Steam has fallen out of favor because they are complex, much harder to maintain than diesels.

I was doing contract work during my Master's thesis that was pretty similar in looks, but operated at around 400kHz (USCG radiobeacons).

In 1992 or so I was sending circuit boards off to fabs by calling them up on a modem and uploading files to a bulletin board -- I guess I was on the leading edge of that.

Den torsdag den 9. juni 2016 kl. 23.03.40 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

yes regular diesel but with electro-hydraulic valves and injection.

Diesel also more efficient, I think LNG carriers still use steam turbines with boiler in part fueled by the gas boil off in the tanks

-Lasse

There are 2 things I particularly dislike about those push-in proto boards. First one ends up with wire links all over the shop, with any sensible wor k flow related layout lost. Secondly it's impractical to keep the prototype . They're overly large and hopelessly fragile.

NT

I have a bin just for the wire links, and manage to stay pretty disciplined about not tossing them anywhere but in the bin when I'm done.

And I treat the circuits like scratch paper -- once I've made them work on a real board, they get put on the shelf, and recycled when I need a bare board.

If I really want to save the circuit, I transfer it to a permanent "breadboard".

I have a Mantis at work but these are really useful (and cheap), too:

I generally use an X-Acto knife.

Very nice!

Yeah circa '92 I was sending files off by email to some place that would cut (whatever the plastic was) masks, mail 'em to me and I'd mail (or hand carry) to the local electro-plater. (They did nickle plated fishing lures too.)

George H.

Not a good question. I don't work on my own car because I can afford to pay someone else to do it. My small amount of free time is worth much more than what I pay a mechanic (just taking it in takes too much time).

I rip out and re-solder something else on copper clad constantly, (well if I'm doing circuit stuff.) A few IC's to make sure this bit works right. I only keep the really ugly ones. (You can show 'em to lab/work visitors and they leave you alone sooner. And then every once in a while you find a fellow electronics geek... both attractant and repellent. :^)

George H.

Please note that I asked a college student the question. In the distant past, I also asked prospective beginning engineers and prospective technicians. I usually don't ask experienced engineers that question because I really don't care if they know to build their own breadboards. Besides having sufficient funds to pay someone to do their auto repair, they also are able to keep several technicians busy building their breadboards prototypes, and running tests. My question might also be construed an insult, although the few times when I did ask such a question of more experienced engineers, the reply was something like "I did that when I was younger but don't have time these days". Good enough methinks.

Drivel: I just got off the phone with a neighbors middle son. He's attending the local community college studying electronics or whatever it's called these days. He's on his 2nd year and now needs a better computer. I'll spare you the details, but the laptop I sold him a year ago blew up the battery. I told him a few months ago to buy a new clone battery on eBay. Instead, he's been running on the charger. Now, the battery just shorted, which blew the charging circuit. Of course, he wants me to fix it. I said I would help him fix it, show him how to troubleshoot the problem, and supply him with parts, but he has to do the work including teardown and reassembly. I was rather surprised when he announce that he was too busy learning to program and that programmers don't need such skills. I'll have a chance to pound some sense into his skull tomorrow, when he goes shopping for a new machine in my palatial office. This somewhat reinforces my suspicion that we're well on our way to producing a generation engineers, that really don't know which end of the soldering iron to grab.

That's the answer I would have given, with the exception that I would have said that I hated every minute doing it. Cars are a tool. I don't enjoy fixing tools. I just want to use them (computers are the same, anymore).

He's in a college electronics curriculum but is learning to be a programmer? Why doesn't he just do a CS degree? I understand why colleges teach programming as engineering. It's cheap. No expensive labs needed (computers are cheap and the student supplies it). he good news is that jobs will be plentiful, as long as I want to work.

I have tried magnifiers like that,but they do not have enough magnification for the SMD for me. Also have to get the head too close to the work to do much soldering or hot air work at the higher magnifiction.

Then bit the bullet and bought the Amscope se400.

MANTIS(tm) station: giant eyeglasses used by senior engineers in denial of their advanced age.

Recently we started using 0603 for everything. No reason, just because. N ow those 0805 bypass caps look like hulking ice cubes. Yet the Mantis lens is the same 20x it's always been. Just get some sharper-pointed tweezers. (Before Mantis, it was fluorescent spring-arm magnifier ringlights. Odd that the youngsters workbenches never had them.)

Pease was waiting for computers and simulations that didn't consistently demonstrate a waste of man-hours and simple conceptual error.

I'm not sure we're at that stage, but we're prepared to use it if the man-hours invested can be banked and built onto, for re-use and iteration, with increasing accuracy and reducing conceptual error.

It's basically a virtual hairball.

RL

We have about six mantises and several video systems, one that allows us to look sideways at BGA joints. Even the young people use the optics. If you were nearsighted enough to solder 0603 parts without optical aid, it wouldn't be healthy, hunching over a board, breathing solder fumes, burning your hair on the iron. The Mantis lets you sit up straight and work comfortably.

We mostly use 0603s, but I like a 4x or 6x lens in my mantis. I must be a lot younger than you.

I'm still waiting for that too. ;)

Transistor-level models are generally OK if you supply realistic strays, but manufacturers' op amp models are uniformly lousy--far less accurate than pencil and paper.

I rarely get into trouble with parts whose datasheets describe their performance accurately, but unfortunately the datasheets are now written by marketing droids.

That flybuck converter I was working on a couple of months ago simulated beautifully, but the datasheet of the converter chip was full of lies--it claimed that it kept on PWMing at light loads, and it didn't.

Dead bug breadboards are especially useful for catching that sort of problem.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

In my corner of IBM Research, around then we had a ME technician type who did boards using (I think) CADAM, believe it or not. The EEs in the support group (Central Scientific Services) used some actual PCB package, but usually just did their own boards.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

This particular one comes with four lenses and is perfectly good for working on SMTs down to 0402s, anyway. The highest magnification lens has a pretty small field (and depth) of view, though. That's where the Mantis shines. I'd probably get a headache if I used it for a long time, too (PD is probably wrong).

I also have an OptiVisor. I leave it out for others to use. ;-)

I don't know that model but in general I find that style impossible to use. I guess I'm spoiled by the Mantis.