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Who has any sort of electronic repair equipment/workbench and what do you have. Post pics if you like.

Here's mine:
2022-05-07 10.56.19.jpg
Solder Station.jpg
 
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Can you revise the method you used for the soldering station so we can see it in the thread. It's a major feature and needs to be shown as a full size pic. I used a nice stereo magnifier for some time when I worked QA/QC for a downhole tool company and it was excellent and the clarity was very good. My fav though is the lens off a old camcorder that I salvaged from the front of a lense assembly. All glass, compound assembly and could be disassembled into 5 pieces for cleaning. It really enabled various angles of viewpoint and contributed to my repairs each and every time I used it which was all the time.
 
No permanent work space, just a small table that I use for a variety of tasks as needed. Among other tools, I have:

Ancient Weller soldering station has since been replaced with Hakko FX951 (love it)
Hakko 808 desoldering gun
Rigol DS1102 'Scope
Fluke 8060A RMS multimeter
Misc: handheld capacitance meter, capacitor ESR meter, signal generator
FLIR TG130
Monoprice Mini Delta 3D printer
No-name hot air station and hot plate.

I'm expecting to encounter fewer DIY electronics projects in the future, less through-hole construction and more SMD. For example, I have a Malahit software-defined radio in my build queue, purchased from RX9CIM long before current political mess.

Most recent projects have been film camera repairs, and there, the problems are mostly mechanical.

_DSC5220.jpg
 
Yes, very impressive. I have only seen one console/repair/calibration station like this that was more comprehensive and bigger. That was a metrology lab I worked @ part time. Very nice stacks of gear. :D
 
No permanent work space, just a small table that I use for a variety of tasks as needed. Among other tools, I have:

Ancient Weller soldering station has since been replaced with Hakko FX951 (love it)
Hakko 808 desoldering gun
Rigol DS1102 'Scope
Fluke 8060A RMS multimeter
Misc: handheld capacitance meter, capacitor ESR meter, signal generator
FLIR TG130
Monoprice Mini Delta 3D printer
No-name hot air station and hot plate.

I'm expecting to encounter fewer DIY electronics projects in the future, less through-hole construction and more SMD. For example, I have a Malahit software-defined radio in my build queue, purchased from RX9CIM long before current political mess.

Most recent projects have been film camera repairs, and there, the problems are mostly mechanical.

View attachment 206140
I'm liking the fan in the upper left of the picture. I didn't see any ventilation on the other pics!
 
Here's the fan in the first pic. Maybe a bit close for soldering iron temp regulation/solder flow but great shot for illustrative purposes.
2022-05-07 10.56.19.jpg
 
Well…
I have a soldering iron and some basic tools. That’s about it. It’s not as easy to repair most things as it was back in the day.
I'll second that. I'm acclimated to ordering any electronic/mechatronic parts for repair and getting them too. Not today! :D
 
I'll second that. I'm acclimated to ordering any electronic/mechatronic parts for repair and getting them too. Not today! :D
Especially when some manufacturers guard access to service data and parts like state secrets.
 
Equipment ventilation: Rackmount fans are mounted into the rear of each shelf, flowing upwards. The uppermost shelf vents to outside. The solder station has no fume hood, but it's located in the shop which has great ventilation.

The fan shown on the electronics bench is actually cooling an RFSoC chip which dissipates ~45W under load. A much nicer, custom heat spreader is available but since I swap devices regularly, a desktop fan is easier to use.

The microscope is a Mantis Compact with x6 objective. They're about $1500 new, but I bought second-hand.
 
Equipment ventilation: Rackmount fans are mounted into the rear of each shelf, flowing upwards. The uppermost shelf vents to outside. The solder station has no fume hood, but it's located in the shop which has great ventilation.

The microscope is a Mantis Compact with x6 objective. They're about $1500 new, but I bought second-hand.
Is that a Tektronix portable O-scope on the right side of the pic?
 
Is that a Tektronix portable O-scope on the right side of the pic?
No, that's a Fieldfox VNA. The left third of the bench is low frequency: Power supplies, DVMs, etc. The middle third is mid frequency (to 6 GHz). The right third is higher frequency (to 26 GHz). Most of the stuff I work on is < 10 GHz.
 
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I got the following equipment, solely to restore, maintain and check my hifi/video gears. I do not have a well organized workbench yet. That's entirely due to my natural laziness ( :) ) and the scarcity of the work I have to do so far.

- Leader LAG-125 audio signal generator ;
- various laserdiscs, CDs, SA-CD and DVD-V or CD-V with test signals : Denon Technical Audio CD, Sony YEDS-18 test disc CD, Denon Audio Check SACD, Digital Video Essential DVD, Video Essential and Pioneer GGV1013 laserdiscs, etc...
- Leader LMV-181A AC wide-band millivoltmeter ;
- Beckman Industrial Model 9020 20 MHz analogue oscilloscope ;
- Boonton 1130 distortion analyzer ;
- Hewlett-Packard 3581A wave analyzer ;
- Rohde & Schwarz UPGR psophometer ;
- Tektronix CFC250 frequency counter ;
- some digital hand-held multi-meters ;
- dirt cheap Chinese MK328 component tester ;
- soldering iron, hot air soldering station, de-soldering vacuum iron, sound level meter, measuring microphone, variac and other tools.
 
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Let's revive this thread.

Current state of my bench includes most items at least as old as the stuff I'm fiddling with.

Scopes:
Tektronix T934A lunchbox portable (or Hoover canister vac, depending on who you ask)
BK Precision 1474 (no match for the Tek--I need to open it up and clean all the switches at least. But it was free.)
Hantek DSO5102P, which isn't actually half bad

Bench DMM's, in increasing order of manliness:
Keithley 175--good, basic 4.5-digit bench DMM with autoranging.
Fluke 8050A--like the Keithley, but not autoranging. I have two of these, but one is in the fixit pile.
Keithley 197--a very good 5.5-digit meter that will measure down to the microvolt range.
HP3456A--the absolute king of classic 6.5-digit bench DMM's. Doesn't measure current, sadly. It's the size of the deck of a Nimitz-class carrier, can be bounced off the tailgate of a truck, contains about 100,000 parts, and loses calibration in about a hundred years. I have absolutely no reason to own this, but I had to have it. To me, it's the supreme expression of Bill Hewlett principles in a package I can afford, at least on today's used market.

Portable DMM's:
Fluke 115, the standard electrician's DMM.
Simpson 260, because why not? But I use it rarely enough that the batteries are usually dead when I do.
Plus about 75 cheapies, none of which I can find when I need them.

AC SSVM:
Trio VT-106, which is absolutely perfect for biasing tape decks :cool: I bought it when rebuilding the Teac A4300 R2R deck.

Function generator:
Kikusui Model 455, very old-school analog waveform generator.
Tektronix CFG250 (Tek's rebranded budget line, cheap and cheerful, and will produce up to 20-volt waveforms. Stick an amp on it and have a frequency-agile AC voltage source.)

Frequency counter:
Tektronix CFC250 100MHz 8-digit frequency counter (as above, but not terrible: 10 PPM accuracy, which for base-band audio is about five digits more than we need.)

Power sources:
PDI 2015R--truly stellar piece of equipment. About 10 or 20mV ripple and response to changing loads up to 20 volts and 1.5 amps within 25 microseconds.
PDI 50-15-150--much older than the above but good when I need to stack them together to get higher voltages.
Kikusui PAB 32-2A--the one the Chinese like to rip off. This one has a digital display. I just got fixed it after it arrive last week having been dropped and seriously crunched in transit.
GW Instek GPC-3020 triple power supply, which makes setting up a positive/negative source for testing opamps and so on really quick and easy. 30 volts, 2 amps.
Craptastic no-name Chinese switch-mode lab power supply, 60 volts, 3 amps.
All the above can be daisy-chained to produce 20+50+32+30+30+60=202 VDC, maximum current 150 mA. Not much need for that :)

Regulated load:
Transistor Devices DLR 50-15-150 for testing power supplies, which seem to me to be the most likely fault of the stuff that ends up in my fixit pile, except for mechanical issues and dirty switches/pots.

Misc:
10-amp General Adjust-A-Volt (aka, Variac) that works perfectly about 400 years after it was made.
BK Precision Model 830 capacitance meter. Uses four D cells, which do, however, seem to last about five years.
BK Precision Model 510 transistor tester.

Probably about half the above could be done by a good, modern handheld multimeter.

Rick "missed this thread when it was fresh, but let's freshen it up with some old, moldy crap" Denney
 
Speaking of "old, moldy crap". Here's a list from my audio bench.

Scopes:
Tektronix 2236 and 2215

DMMs:
Fluke 8050A and 83
Sencor DVM36
Radio Shack DMM

Analyzers:
Sound Technology ST1701A, ST1700B Distortion analyzers and ST1000A FM alignment generator
Hewlett Packard HP3580A Spectrum Analyzer

Function Generators:
Hewlett Packard HP3312A
Heath Kit IG-B (heavily modified)

Power Sources:
Staco E1010VAW variable AC 10 amp
Heath Kit IP-18 regulated DC

Loads:
Eight Dale NH-250 250 watt

Misc:
Weller WE51, WE1010, EC-1000 andD-550 soldering irons
Hakko 808 desoldering gun
Tenma LCR meter
Capacitor Wizard 1B
Sencor TC154 tube tester
Sencor Pocket Cricket
Fluke 80T-150U temperature probe
Huntron,Pomona and Tektronix probes
Infocus 7205 projector
O.C. White magnifier light and uberlight

Most bought used and some are modified for better performance and reliability
 
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