14:00 would you not, for a production PCB, make these traces as thick as you can (without wicking up too much soldering heat, of course. Maybe hatch the area?), in order to conserve etchant?
YES, more copper is better, bigger solder pads better more relaiable, and it is better of the envioment, less chemical waste, and it is cheaper too, since acid will last longer, the photofilm development also last longer, since it is also poluted by all the material it remove. I design PCB's as a full time job, my best designs remove almost no copper,
Very nice. Could you in a next video present how this tool is used in conjunction with a plen plotter? (In the 60's I was about ten, so now experience there ;-))
please search my video folder, i allready released many videoes about pen plotters, they are so much fun to play with, we used them still back when I started my first education.
16:30 I always wonder why people back then didn't even seem to THINK of separating primary wiring from the rest of the wiring harnesses - it would have seemed like a good idea even back then to a) maximize safety in case wiring gets damaged and brittle, especially with test gear where users tend to touch stuff that is connected to inputs or outputs, b) make it hard for anyone servicing or modifying the unit to accidentally wire mains into anything where mains doesn't belong, c) make it easy to disconnect sensitive secondary circuitry when insulation testing the unit? I guess mains electricity was really less deadly back then :)
It was a different world back then, hard to understand if you weren't part of it. When this was designed, they weren't hand-wringers when it came to safety. It was expected that anybody opening a chassis would have the requisite training to keep themselves safe. The onus back then was on people to learn how to keep themselves out of danger. But along came the lawyers who flipped everything around and now you have to protect even the dumbest Darwin candidates safe from themselves. On top of that, you now have millions of videos produced by anybody with a camera and an account showing folks how to do all kinds a stupid, crazy stuff that can get them killed making it much, much more of an issue. BTW, it was extremely common back in the day for folks in the US to file the wide blade of a polarized plug to normal size so that they could us the older non-polarized receptacles that were still in common use at the time. If I was doing a service call at somebody's house, the first thing I would check would be the ACV between the chassis and a good ground to make sure the line wasn't on the wrong side which it was probably 30% of the time! If the polarization was correct, sometimes the house was wired incorrectly. Even if all that was good, I'd run into leaky bypass caps to chassis ground that could put quite a high AC voltage on the chassis as well. Despite this, folks weren't dying left and right from electrocution as a result. Mains was just as dangerous back then, it's just perceived to be much more dangerous today.
These blue capacitor arrays are also commonly found in the timebase of philips oscilloscopes of that era, eg PM3230... probably developed for oscilloscopes and reused for function generators :)
i got at least 3 units to measure THD, it is as you say the best way to perfect a sine, i just start with the most visual, and understand what the four trimmers do, the combination of them also move the wanted frequency, so all needs to be right, i think the scope explain is better for the video, more visual and show more things at the same time, so the viewer will understand better
anything containing alcohol will remove the smoker layer, but also some types of front plate coatings and paint is made not to handle alcohol so that needs to be tested every time, I start with low prof.
How big is your "replaced suspicious capacitors and failed components" box by now, if you keep one? I tend to get by with a lunchbox sized container for now, yours must be at least shoebox sized....
nice one Thomas😁
14:00 would you not, for a production PCB, make these traces as thick as you can (without wicking up too much soldering heat, of course. Maybe hatch the area?), in order to conserve etchant?
YES, more copper is better, bigger solder pads better more relaiable, and it is better of the envioment, less chemical waste, and it is cheaper too, since acid will last longer, the photofilm development also last longer, since it is also poluted by all the material it remove. I design PCB's as a full time job, my best designs remove almost no copper,
You could also use the FFT on your scope, to tune down the harmonics?
true, it will give some sort of indication, however it is only 10 bit full scale vertical,
Very nice. Could you in a next video present how this tool is used in conjunction with a plen plotter? (In the 60's I was about ten, so now experience there ;-))
please search my video folder, i allready released many videoes about pen plotters, they are so much fun to play with, we used them still back when I started my first education.
16:30 I always wonder why people back then didn't even seem to THINK of separating primary wiring from the rest of the wiring harnesses - it would have seemed like a good idea even back then to a) maximize safety in case wiring gets damaged and brittle, especially with test gear where users tend to touch stuff that is connected to inputs or outputs, b) make it hard for anyone servicing or modifying the unit to accidentally wire mains into anything where mains doesn't belong, c) make it easy to disconnect sensitive secondary circuitry when insulation testing the unit? I guess mains electricity was really less deadly back then :)
maybe they simply did now know as much as we do now ?
It was a different world back then, hard to understand if you weren't part of it. When this was designed, they weren't hand-wringers when it came to safety. It was expected that anybody opening a chassis would have the requisite training to keep themselves safe. The onus back then was on people to learn how to keep themselves out of danger. But along came the lawyers who flipped everything around and now you have to protect even the dumbest Darwin candidates safe from themselves. On top of that, you now have millions of videos produced by anybody with a camera and an account showing folks how to do all kinds a stupid, crazy stuff that can get them killed making it much, much more of an issue.
BTW, it was extremely common back in the day for folks in the US to file the wide blade of a polarized plug to normal size so that they could us the older non-polarized receptacles that were still in common use at the time. If I was doing a service call at somebody's house, the first thing I would check would be the ACV between the chassis and a good ground to make sure the line wasn't on the wrong side which it was probably 30% of the time! If the polarization was correct, sometimes the house was wired incorrectly. Even if all that was good, I'd run into leaky bypass caps to chassis ground that could put quite a high AC voltage on the chassis as well. Despite this, folks weren't dying left and right from electrocution as a result. Mains was just as dangerous back then, it's just perceived to be much more dangerous today.
These blue capacitor arrays are also commonly found in the timebase of philips oscilloscopes of that era, eg PM3230... probably developed for oscilloscopes and reused for function generators :)
If you have some way of measuring THD, it's a great way to dial in the sinewave geometry accurately.
i got at least 3 units to measure THD, it is as you say the best way to perfect a sine, i just start with the most visual, and understand what the four trimmers do, the combination of them also move the wanted frequency, so all needs to be right, i think the scope explain is better for the video, more visual and show more things at the same time, so the viewer will understand better
From "half of milliHertz".. Similar to the HP3310 from that era (also half of milliHertz but to 5MHz)..
You want a spectrum analyzer to get the best possible sine wave, doing it by looks on scope isn't the best, better by harmonics on SA.
"Smoker Layer" 😅There are special nicotine removers. I've already made several old devices shine again
anything containing alcohol will remove the smoker layer, but also some types of front plate coatings and paint is made not to handle alcohol so that needs to be tested every time, I start with low prof.
How big is your "replaced suspicious capacitors and failed components" box by now, if you keep one? I tend to get by with a lunchbox sized container for now, yours must be at least shoebox sized....
funny you mention it, it is a cool extra hobby to keep stuff like that, I am allready too late to make a new box for 2025
That's 500uHz, not 5mHz. That's not going to be easy to measure the symmetry of the sine at that f...
you are right, i love to be corrected, show you payed more attention to detail than i did 🙂 thanks again, i have fixed the headline.