Lab setup: Parts and tools cabinets

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Zeiss is probably a bit overkill for soldering. I've also seen that East German (yes, I know it's one country now, don't confuse me with McCain) Jena optics, which was Zeiss prior to the Russians taking over. Still overkill.

The poor (or cheap) man's version of that is the IKEA ALEX.

I wouldn't want to use one to replace a toolchest full of *tools* but it's fine for electronic parts.

With prices like that, it seems there is a great oportunity for someone to make them. Slight re-design so slotted panels can make the interiors would allow bette mass production? If the market is large enough, the drawers could be moulded (moulds ae costly).

Overkill is actually pretty nice if you can get it, though. I've used B&Ls, and they're okay but not stellar--the ones I used had really small exit pupils (like small binoculars), so it was fatiguing to have to hold my head really still. (That's one place where John L's Mantises really shine, even better than Zeiss.) The B&Ls also have quite a short working distance, don't they?

I'll probably get another couple of pairs of soldering glasses, with the IPD dorked to be closer to the value for close work, and save up the $2k for a second-hand Zeiss or Mantis. (My IPD is about 70 mm, so most of the off-the-rack solutions cause really horrible eye strain.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

If you can keep something like that from warping and wedging over time...maybe molded plastic over a steel stiffener. Vidmar drawers are rated at 400 lbs per drawer, *fully extended*. Still, there are probably cheaper ways of making the drawer dividers, which are also very expensive--about as much as the drawers themselves, which are $70 or so apiece. That's one reason that I decided not to get any dividers--I have a bunch of the special plastic boxes, and will use some Target ones (or even cardboard) for the rest.

The big benefit of Vidmar cabinets is that you can keep incredible amounts of stuff in them and have it right at hand, which saves time and floor space. Vidmar shows a 2.5X increase in storage density vs shelves, which I can easily believe. The increase is much more still for smaller parts.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Interesting, thanks. Maybe for probes and meters and cables and such, with a scope on the top. Perhaps I could add a plywood stiffener to the bottom to increase its load handling--those particle board things always fail where there's a big shear or bending stress concentration, e.g. near the casters.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Dunno that particular one, but a couple I have had the bottoms pop out of the drawers AND the slides fail (on two different inexpensive units). They're fine for a panty drawer or something, but start throwing torque wrenches and boxes of steel dowel pins in there (or even cables and linear AC adapters) and they'll not take it for long. Grizzly has some interesting looking ones on sale for not too bad a price.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I'm about 70 mm too, and I know what you mean.

I'm happy with my 6x Mantis for surface-mount work, and even for photography... just poke a camera into the viewer hood.

But what I'd really like is something to check PCB stackups and work on really tiny stuff. For PCBs, I'd Dremel into a board somewhere to expose the copper in all the layers (unless Lizzie remembered to add an edge coupon, and the board house didn't take it out) and view it edge-on. So I'd need lots of mag, a good graticule, and good topside illumination, plus a fixture of some sort to hold the board steady. Any suggestions?

John

I used to have an ancient Leitz Orthoplan for that sort of job, with the board held in a small toolmaker's vise, and a nice Mitutoyo LWD scope mounted over a probe station for finer stuff. Mitu's web site is as bad as NXP used to be--if you already know the exact thing you want, you can find it, but good luck otherwise. About $10k or thereabouts, with the very nice focusing rack but without the stand, since I was mounting it on a bridge on an optical table. Eyepiece micrometers you can get from Edmund, if you don't mind calibrating them yourself for each mag setting.

At this point I'd probably be reduced to delaminating the board and using a caliper. ;)

BTW John, my first PMT arrived today, and my $40 HV power supply turned out to have a beautiful 0-2 kV regulated Bertan module in it, with about

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

The uprights are 70 inches, the top and bottom are about 2 inches each, and the top has a fan flange (no fan in it) that sticks up perhaps another two inches. Should leave you some room (about a foot, I guess) for casters, though you can make that pretty minimal (and increase stability) by shifting the casters out and up. The original HP base you won't get (I changed the parts around and cleaned up the casters - it's now the "heavy object mover" in my shop) had a "step" at the front to at least move the front casters 8-10 inches or so forward of the front of the cabinet, since a lot of rack stuff is weighted toward the front of the rack.

I will need to figure out where I parked the 8 big screws for the one that's apart, but they should turn up without too much trouble. I'm at the intersection of MA, VT and NY.

Measured it as 2.5" from the focal plane to base of the objective shield in both the 20x and 40x. Not huge but plenty of working room for my home setup. Post diameter is 15mm (0.59").

As others have mentioned, an Optivisor is really the way to go for "normal" supplementary magnification.

old.

This looks cool:

John

old.

The mag is pretty small for what you have in mind, though.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

the blurb suggests it's designed to hold flat sheets of paper that's potentially denser most electronics parts. (except transformers)

old.

Yeah, but $400 for something that's a webcam plus a bunch of white LEDs?

old.

That's the hi-res version. The 640x480 is a lot cheaper. And it adjusts from 10 to 200x mag and comes with measurement and calibration software. There are cheap kiddie USB microscopes too, but quality is mediocre. And there's lots of stuff for $1500 or so.

This one would be fairly easy to fixture for edge-on viewing of big PC boards. And it brings the microscope to the board, instead of the board into the microscope.

John

I bought a bunch of these to store SMD parts:

The send me an old-pink colored version. I paid 25 euro (including postage) for 100 square boxes + 15 rectangular boxes. The boxes can be connected together in almost any configuration. The boxes look well designed and I'm not worried they break easely. I've seen (and broken) worse professional quality stuff.

Well, you never know with Ikea stuff. We have an Ikea kitchen (just the cupboards and drawers) and I must say the drawers can hold a lot of weight. We use one 31.5" wide drawer for heavy stuff like cans with soup and so on and it has held for years already.

The advantages of coin envelopes are that they are dense; you can write part ID/notes/measurements all over them; you can stick other pieces of paper inside with the parts; you can stick the Digikey label on the back; it's easy to extract single small parts; parts don't spill out; they are cheap, about $40 for 1000.

John