I'm not sure that we have such useful equipment anymore. We used to have this large by heavy HP component analyzer that would do an analysis of anything placed between its jaws from DC up to 500 MHz. We had fixtures for all the SMD parts too. I think I was the only person that ever used it. It could source a bit of current too, good enough to measure the ESR and ESL of the electrolytic caps that I chose for the Simple SE. That is the reason for the unusual and large values of cathode bypass caps. They were the best measuring caps in the Digikey catalog at the time.
I came back from Christmas break one year to find that someone had cleaned up the lab. The comonent analyzer and the old TEK curve tracer were gone....forever. Perfectly good working equipment sent to scrap. All of the 8640's were banished too, but most of them were dead. They got my favorite "component tester" too. It was a 0 to 120 volt 0 to 10 amp Sorensen power supply. All components it tested were dead!
I still have a 0 to 20 volt 50 amp HP under my desk though. It is the penny tester. It can distinguish between an old penny and a new penny. Turn the power supply up full. Using pliers apply the penny to the bus bars on the back. An old copper penny will make a small spark and the power supply will groan as it current limits. The bench lights will dim. A new zinc penny will errupt into a 6 inch fireball and dissapear leaving a grey stain on the rear of the power supply!
There might be some suitable equipment stashed in one of the older labs in the plant somewhere, but I doubt it. The trend has been to replace most of us older workers with people too young and inexperienced to know what that stuff does. I think there are about 10 engineers left that are over 50 years old.
I have a digital LCR bridge stashed in my warehouse but I don't know if it works. It's too big for my available bench space.
Hi George,
That's sad to hear!
At least my HP 8640B is working fine, but one gear is beginning to crack. I have a spare section for that, and the counter section as well. The RF amp is something I'd have to rig up if it ever failed. I am ever so careful with this unit. I also have an HP 8656B. It does some things better, and some things not as well. It sure is nice to be able to flip between frequencies during an alignment. Believe it or not, I also have a Radiometer SMG1 FM generator. Not something that fits your work, but it's the only thing I have that encodes a stereo signal. The audio distortion is pretty low, so something it does well. Forget changing frequencies though.
What is the make and model of your LCR bridge? That's yet another device I need to get. There is a Heathkit thing here that I'll have to rebuild in order to use.
-Chris
That's sad to hear!
At least my HP 8640B is working fine, but one gear is beginning to crack. I have a spare section for that, and the counter section as well. The RF amp is something I'd have to rig up if it ever failed. I am ever so careful with this unit. I also have an HP 8656B. It does some things better, and some things not as well. It sure is nice to be able to flip between frequencies during an alignment. Believe it or not, I also have a Radiometer SMG1 FM generator. Not something that fits your work, but it's the only thing I have that encodes a stereo signal. The audio distortion is pretty low, so something it does well. Forget changing frequencies though.
What is the make and model of your LCR bridge? That's yet another device I need to get. There is a Heathkit thing here that I'll have to rebuild in order to use.
-Chris
I have two of these in excellent working condition. When the old Paging plant closed in Boynton Beach, they sold all the equipment to a surplus dealer, who used to run the calibration lab in the plant. I knew him and bought a van load of stuff cheap. That event depressed the used test equipment market in Florida for at least a year. I got my 8903A audio analyzer from him too. It was broken and it was $75! I got my own penny tester, it heeps my roll around rack from tipping over (weighs about 70 pounds), and several other HP RF pieces.
They crushed the entire Motorola plant, and used the rubble to fill in the lake. A mall and condo occupy tha space now. I worked there for about a year in the early 90's.
I believe it is made by ESI. It is old and big and blue. A friend who gave up the electronics hobby when he had kids and needed to make his lab back into a bedroom gave me all of his test equipment. There are several pieces including a HP spectrum analyzer and a Telequipment scope. Neither of them work, but I never plugged in the bridge. It all came from one of the Motorola employee auctions in the 80's.
Thats because it wasn't there! Motorola came to Florida in 1970 in a rented building. The Plantation plant opened in 1971. I started in 1973. The Plantation facility grew to nearly 5000 people in the 80's and several small rented buildings in Broward county opened. The Paging group built a new plant in Boynton Beach on the southeast corner of Congress and Gateway. It opened in the mid 80's. By the early 90's the Boynton operation had outgrown the building so several leased buildings were in operation.
By 2005 all operations in Palm Beach county has ceased. Sometime later the main plant was torn down and an upscale condo community built on the land.
All of the small facilities in Broward county have been closed. The official number of employees in the Plantation facility is a secret, but lets just say it is real easy to find a parking place even when I'm late.
Well, I have access to much better stuff at work, and here I still have my 141T that I got at a hamfest in the early 70's, cheap because it had been dropped. I need to smack it every once in a while, but it usually works. Too many projects and too little time. The 8558's will probably happen the day after the 141T dies. Been slowly working on a "universal RF test instrument" of my own design too.
I have been real lucky with Ebay purchases made from scrap dealers. I got my Fluke 407D for $25 (and $45 shipping from California). Sold "as -is untested." I plugged it in, and it worked, still does after 5 years despite my routine overloads. It still contains the original tubes and bumble bee caps. Last cal date was in 1995.
My Knight KG-664 was a hamfest deal too. The end of the day on Sunday. The owner had been asking $50 which was a deal, but no one bit, so I offered $20. He asked what I was going to do with it, and I told him that I designed tube stuff and always needed more power supplies. He was overjoyed. He had built it from a kit in the 60's and didn't want to see one of his babies murdered for its 4 brand new Svetlana 6L6GC's. There are still in there, although I am sure that they have been warmed up a few times.
Deals are getting rarer at hamfests since the reawakening of tube audio. There was lots of tubes, tube audio equipment, and useful test equipment at Dayton this year. The prices were STUPID. $550 for a Dynaco ST70! It sold in the first two hours. I got a few $1 tubes. Last year the rain lowered prices, so I dragged home too many pounds of tube stuff!
OK, before I proceed any farther, I'd like someone to confirm that the devices I have are not counterfeits. The dimensions are different than spec (9/16" as opposed to 1"), and the leads are neither copper nor silver (they are highly magnetic). Initial DCR and noise measurements are consistent with a current-sensing resistor, but I don't want to spend the rest of the day getting detailed measurements of something that is not a Bybee device.
BybeeTech - DIY Products
BybeeTech - DIY Products
I think what may have happened is that Bybee didn't update the measurements when they supplanted the original small purifiers with the smaller Slipstream purifiers.
Here's a photo (from Parts Connexion) showing the original small purifier on the right:
It looks to be about an inch by 1/3 inch.
Here's a photo of the smaller Slipstream:
se
Here's a photo (from Parts Connexion) showing the original small purifier on the right:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
It looks to be about an inch by 1/3 inch.
Here's a photo of the smaller Slipstream:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
se
The web detail page has not only a link icon for product information, but
"Lifestyle" as well. What is remarkable is the management team information
is conspicuously absent from the company's web page.
I wont need the Bybee Purifiers. I have a special battery (patent pending)
that can store pre-purified quanta - and supply them as needed to downstream components. There - that's my disclosure!
Now that my quanta are pure, if I could only keep the damn Flouride
out of the water!
-- Jim
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