When I was younger I loved twisting knobs too... mostly on things less mechanical though. I suspect most things twisted on back then are now the worse for wear...
I know things are not fair... and have come to realize that I was never really a chick magnet... but whenever I did something novel that was worthy of recognition senior management always unanimously refused to let me to be the face of the company.... and I don't know why!...
Exactly my approach. Aside from the computer on the workbench, my whole test set-up for both audio and RF projects fills roughly 2/3 of a closet shelf when not in use.
Although none of the gear produces famous logos in the screen shots, I can perform analyses that rivals what I could do in the lab at work before I retired. Plenty good enough for me. Now, if I was in the electronics business in some way, I'd buy and use the recognized standard tools. But, I'm not.
In my experience, human skin smells more like pork when it burns. Or maybe that's just me? (oink, oink)
That's fair. I've just been bit too many times by buying a cheap or universal tool only to hate it and buying the tool I actually wanted or needed a few years later. In those cases, buying the cheap tool turned out to be more expensive than just buying the more costly tool up front.
Tom
It's a fine line, even in a larger scale R&D setting. There's always hidden costs, like use of space that has to be freed, people and machines relocated, and no longer available for other uses, or infrastructure upgrades that become necessary, replacement of transformers and switch panels, training for people, etc.. Sometimes it's also not exactly foreseeable how things will develop. For example, at my old place of work I argued for getting the largest autoclave we could reasonably afford and fit, so we could cure up to ten foot support structures. Well, in the decade we've had that autoclave we never made anything longer than four feet. So, was it a wrong decision? For my own R&D, I resisted the urge to buy a multi-$10k device to measure thermal properties of material samples, but then I spent about a quarter of that amount on buying those services from an outside lab.
Federal labs have a good setup for making equipment no longer needed at one place available to other labs. But even free equipment is never really free, and hoarding is a real problem...
Federal labs have a good setup for making equipment no longer needed at one place available to other labs. But even free equipment is never really free, and hoarding is a real problem...
Well, yeah. Money doesn't grow on trees here either. My lab is in a small bedroom in my house. It's probably 8 sq m. Storage is at a premium. But even large test equipment, such as the HP gear from the 1980s, doesn't take up that much space when stored on its side on shelves. You don't have to have each and every piece of equipment on a bench, plugged in, ready to go.
Hoarding is a problem for some. As is overconsumption. I do my best to avoid both. I also refuse to pay for storage. I park my car in the garage. I'm one of those people. 😉
Tom
Hoarding is a problem for some. As is overconsumption. I do my best to avoid both. I also refuse to pay for storage. I park my car in the garage. I'm one of those people. 😉
Tom