Left scope on all day with no input by accident

[bigwill]

I left my scope on all day, with the intensity on quite high because I was using it in the daylight in the morning, and forgot to switch it off. Would this have been long enough to burn a line into the CRT?

[SY]

Dumb question: did it burn a line? You've got the scope, you might as well look at it.

[bigwill]

I was scared to look so I tried to get reassurance first...

I put the trace on something like 1uS / div and fed it with a 1Khz triangle wave so that the whole screen was scanned much like a television, and I found two VERY faint lines of wear, the previous owner might have made the same mistake at some point, the lines are so faint you have to look pretty hard and you'd never notice under normal usage

For some reason this really bugs me though! I'm far too much of a perfectionist. The scope isn't even very new and it was second hand. I guess I'm just funny like that.

[kevinkr]

Depends on the scope (brand, model) and vintage, but most modern scopes are pretty phosphor burn resistant. A few hours at high intensity isn't like to do much - a few days maybe.. This is a pretty common occurrence over the life of most scopes and I have seen very few over the course of my career that had this particular problem. There are always exceptions but it still looks ok you are fine.

[Geek]

Our scopes in the TV shop were on at 7 or 8AM and didn't go off until 6PM... they lived forever

Cheers!

[slam]

Nothing to worry if you are not using something like a Tek 7104 (I double it if you are asking this particular question.)

Burn in is a gradual process. The scope is still quite useful even with some burn-in on the screen.

[bigwill]

Thanks for the reassurance guys.