updated lab/workshop pic

[martin martin]

When one or all is stuck at home for en extended time, all you can do it add new and old instruments to the shelf!

New setup includes:

Heathkit 2.5 digit DMM

Lambda dual PS

Tektronix 2235 with built in freq counter- great catch eBay $100!

Home made PS from 1980 (long ago)

Instek Function Gen - Ebay also $50

2 DMMs; Fluke and WinHy

DER EE LCR meter

That's all the goodies on the shelf!

[Nicholas Stock]

Here’s part of my current madness..

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 20, 2020, at 15:37, martin martin <mcve...@gmail.com> wrote:



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<lab of madness.JPG>

[Jeff Walton]

Love the earthquake nets! 

Jeff

[martin martin]

Is that a single-digit LED clock on the right?  I have the same one!  I've evolved to two Nixie types. Nice, but a pain to set

~

mcve...@gmail.com

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[Nicholas Stock]

An early addition many years ago...not the most friendly of clocks to set I'll agree!

Jeff, you never can be too careful....especially in SoCal. They're cheap as nuts too, so made sense to do....

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[Nicholas Stock]

Yep, an IP-17....didn't need to do anything to mine fortunately....very useful for some projects!

On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 12:34 PM Mark Moulding <urro...@att.net> wrote:

Dig that  Heathkit power supply (IP-17? or IP-2717?) at the lower right!  I have one also, and it's a great unit - 0-400 VDC, well-regulated, at 100 mA, plus bias and filament supplies, all done using vacuum tubes.  There's nothing like it available now at any price that I could find.  No need, though; I just re-capped mine and it works perfectly.

~~
Mark Moulding

On Monday, April 20, 2020 at 3:55:04 PM UTC-7, Pramanicin wrote:

Here’s part of my current madness..

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 20, 2020, at 15:37, martin martin <mcve...@gmail.com> wrote:



When one or all is stuck at home for en extended time, all you can do it add new and old instruments to the shelf!

New setup includes:

Heathkit 2.5 digit DMM

Lambda dual PS

Tektronix 2235 with built in freq counter- great catch eBay $100!

Home made PS from 1980 (long ago)

Instek Function Gen - Ebay also $50

2 DMMs; Fluke and WinHy

DER EE LCR meter

That's all the goodies on the shelf!

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<lab of madness.JPG>

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[Mark Moulding]

And here's my madness:

 

HP 1602A logic analyzer

HP 8903B audio analyzer (measures distortion down to .01%)

Heathkit IP-2717 power supply 0-400V

HP 400E AC voltmeter

HP 466A AC amplifier

Tektronix CDM250 multi-meter (replaced with an HP 3435A unit)

Radio Shack 2 GHz frequency counter (really! it’s a pretty nice one, too)

Krohn-Hite 3202 dual multi-mode filter

HP 3478A multi-meter

HP 8654A RF signal generator 10-520 MHz

Miele SM5005 500 MHz spectrum analyzer  (you can see that my RF stuff drops off like a cliff at 500 MHz)

 

Bottom row:

HP 6011A power supply 0-20V @ 120A

Chinese supplies: 0-120V @ 3A, dual 0-30V @ 5A

Assorted multi-meters and logic probes

LeCroy WaveAce-1000 oscilloscope 100 MHz dual-channel

HP 456A AC current probe

Fluke 6011A signal generator 10 Hz – 11 MHz

HP 5326B frequency counter 50 MHz (despite their age, the 6011A and this counter agree within 2 counts in the 7th digit)

Chinese 24 MHz dual-channel arbitrary wave generator (a surprisingly good quality instrument)

Protek B-803 audio sweep generator

 

Not shown, but sitting just off to the side, and used a lot:

Tektronix 475 oscilloscope 200 MHz 2 mV/div (came out in ‘72, and is still my favorite ‘scope)

HP 3580A audio spectrum analyzer

Tektronix 1241 logic analyzer

Chinese T-962 reflow oven

Tektronix 575 curve tracer

Hickok and Seco tube testers

[Nicholas Stock]

Ha! You're clearly crazier than I am.... :)

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[martin martin]

That's an impressive bench! (both of you)  The Heathkit 2.5 digit MM is funny to watch as the sample rate is very slow.  

~

mcve...@gmail.com

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[Nick]

This is a photo from a few years ago - my shack has since progressively moved towards the digital world (where I really come from), and is very different now... The tiny board being threatened on the bench is a Jim Williams design for an ultra-low THD oscillator... The big amplifier on the right is a Perreaux 2150B that I rebuilt - 400W/chan into 4ohms, class AB. Clipping into 8ohms starts at about 320W/chan... Used to run toasty and warm the shack nicely in the winter... There's a 200W non-inductive dummy load just to the left of it.

Doing a lot with remote monitoring using ESP32s (quite a lot of analogue signal processing there) and RPi servers running docker/swarm.... Currently getting a Pi 4 to boot of an M.2 SATA SSD rather than the nasty uSD card. It's easy with Pi 3s but the 4 has a completely different boot process and the current firmware doesn't support it. Should be arriving imminently though, then sayonara uSD cards...

Apart from the IoT stuff, there are a lot of Pis round our property, from music servers & clients to building management & network monitoring etc. One of the docker hosts in the network cabinet is running the UniFi Controller, Pi-hole, a Grafana server and a media server.

[Nicholas Stock]

Wow.

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 3:09 AM Nick <gerbilp...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is a photo from a few years ago - my shack has since progressively moved towards the digital world (where I really come from), but is now looking really cool again.

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[John Smout]

This shop window in London's Victoria district seems somewhat ironic, given the current circumstances. Might it be a caption competition candidate?

John S

[martin martin]

That's a lot of NEON!

Well, I have one of my one too...

~

mcve...@gmail.com

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[jb-electronics]

Got one too! I had it custom made for my electronics YouTube channel www.youtube.com/FriendlyWire :)

It's supposed to be the two letters F and W, and the W looks like the symbol for a resistor.

Cheers

Jens

On 2020-04-22 3:56 p.m., martin martin wrote:

That's a lot of NEON!

Well, I have one of my one too...

~

mcve...@gmail.com

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 11:26 AM John Smout <j...@jsdesign.co.uk> wrote:

This shop window in London's Victoria district seems somewhat ironic, given the current circumstances. Might it be a caption competition candidate?

John S

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[newxito]

I love the "Hochspannung" sign!

Am Donnerstag, 23. April 2020 00:09:47 UTC+2 schrieb Jens Boos:

Got one too! I had it custom made for my electronics YouTube channel www.youtube.com/FriendlyWire :)

It's supposed to be the two letters F and W, and the W looks like the symbol for a resistor.

Cheers

Jens

On 2020-04-22 3:56 p.m., martin martin wrote:

That's a lot of NEON!

Well, I have one of my one too...

~

mcve...@gmail.com

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 11:26 AM John Smout <j...@jsdesign.co.uk> wrote:

This shop window in London's Victoria district seems somewhat ironic, given the current circumstances. Might it be a caption competition candidate?

John S

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[Michail Wilson]

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 22, 2020, at 3:19 PM, newxito <axt...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[martin martin]

Nice looking sign!  Odd note here:  mine was made for me some 25 years ago by a "neon bender".  We bartered for PC repair.  He was a serious conspiracy guy who was convinced the football and all other sports were run by the government to 'keep the people occupied'  -- What a can of worms I may have opened here...

~

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[Mac Doktor]

On Apr 22, 2020, at 6:39 PM, martin martin <mcve...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nice looking sign! 

I went to neon school 20 years ago. With another 18-24 months of daily practice I might have been able to make something like that. Needless to say I never had a career in the business and LEDs have put a small dent in demand for cold cathode signage.

Everything I brought home with me broke and being handled a few times and I never managed to take any good pictures while I had the chance. My "thesis" piece was the logo for the band "Hole" (Courtney Love's band). My girlfriend was a huge fan so I made it for her. I powered it up for her once. It was clear tubing filled with neon and it was so bright she couldn't stand to look at it.

It was actually two pieces: The word "Hole" and a big heart that went around it. THAT is still intact although I'm not sure exactly where it is at the moment. The HV power supply that came with my tuition is solid state and works great with the huge xenon flash tube I bought from Electronic Goldmine. Fits right in with my 18" Lumindisc, Radio Shack Lightening Storm and crackle tubes. Here's a picture from the last year I was able to set up for Halloween (2nd one down):

https://www.astarcloseup.com/2011/11/halloween-2011.html

I forgot about the plasma sphere on the left. It's the one made by With Design In Mind™. It's the best looking and best made one I've ever seen (the ones made by Rabbit and Radio Shack are junk by comparison). I got a second one off of eBay a couple of years ago at a really good price. If you're in the market let me know and I'll point one out for you.

Odd note here:  mine was made for me some 25 years ago by a "neon bender".  We bartered for PC repair.  He was a serious conspiracy guy who was convinced the football and all other sports were run by the government to 'keep the people occupied'

What did he think about the free bread they were handing out?

  -- What a can of worms I may have opened here...

Heh.

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”–Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

[gregebert]

Terry - How did bombarding go ? That is the main reason why I never took up neon design; it's pretty dangerous.

I've also wondered about how much vacuum equipment is really necessary; some books suggest you need to get well below 50 microns to get a good tube. That's way outside my budget and garage space.

[Mac Doktor]

On Apr 22, 2020, at 7:19 PM, gregebert <greg...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Terry - How did bombarding go ? That is the main reason why I never took up neon design; it's pretty dangerous.

It was a very well set up shop. I never felt like I was in any danger. Of course we did have a small amount of triple distilled mercury around. Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently worried about that.

The school went to was run by a tube bender that all the other tube benders were in awe of. A natural. Not that she got that good overnight.

I've also wondered about how much vacuum equipment is really necessary; some books suggest you need to get well below 50 microns to get a good tube. That's way outside my budget and garage space.

Haley had a diffusion pump but never bothered to hook it up. She did have all the latest digital thermometers and what-not. It made processing a breeze.

The shop was very large. You could park eight or ten cars in there. Twelve foot ceiling at least with lots of chicken wire holding finished pieces.

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor”

"Never install version point-zero of anything"

[Nick]

On Thursday, 23 April 2020 00:03:58 UTC+1, Terry Bowman wrote:

I went to neon school 20 years ago. With another 18-24 months of daily practice I might have been able to make something like that. Needless to say I never had a career in the business and LEDs have put a small dent in demand for cold cathode signage.

I did my course for fun at Neon Workshops, the folk that made the nice sign on this group's homepage... I was lucky enough to have one-to-one with Richard Wheater, one of the most gifted neon artists in Europe...

I wanted to make letters - it was tough. Like most here, I'm a pretty practical person, good with my hands... but neon is HARD. I had filled a bucket with broken glass before I had my first decent letter...

Richard's workshops have a really good setup for bombarding etc. - a terrifying operation that, if not done safely, could easily kill in a microsecond...

I ended up making some letters and other bits - the letters were family member initials mainly - e.g. see below... The R & the W were not neon (obviously) - I filled those with Argon plus about 5mg of Hg, hence the blue-white light...

 

[celzey11]

Nice Telechron!

[martin martin]

I have 3 Telechron’s.  2 are 35years old and one is from the early 40s.  

All of them keep exceptional time.   

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[celzey11]

I've got this one I got at a flea market years ago...no idea how old it is but it works and looks great!

On Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 5:17:56 PM UTC-4, martin martin wrote:

I have 3 Telechron’s.  2 are 35years old and one is from the early 40s.  

All of them keep exceptional time.   

On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 14:14 celzey11 <celz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nice Telechron!

On Monday, April 20, 2020 at 6:37:05 PM UTC-4, martin martin wrote:

When one or all is stuck at home for en extended time, all you can do it add new and old instruments to the shelf!

New setup includes:

Heathkit 2.5 digit DMM

Lambda dual PS

Tektronix 2235 with built in freq counter- great catch eBay $100!

Home made PS from 1980 (long ago)

Instek Function Gen - Ebay also $50

2 DMMs; Fluke and WinHy

DER EE LCR meter

That's all the goodies on the shelf!

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[martin martin]

Look on the back or open it.  The manufacture date is often inside 

Usually 1970s or so

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[Christian Elzey]

Did a little research cause I was curious and turns out it's from the 40s

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