Late last week I received an email that I had a pair of packages inbound from element14. Based on the listed weights, I knew it was most likely my prizes from the Project14, Op-Amp-a-Palooza contest. Here is a picture of the contents of the two packages:
Thank you so much element14 for the great and interesting contests and the opportunity to win some great prizes. Upon unpacking the contents of the package and playing around with the contents a bit, I began on the serious work of figuring out how to add these instruments into the collection at my workstation. First off, I noticed that I was already crammed in pretty tightly in the instrument bay of my workstation. I had hoped that the new Function/Arbitrary Waveform Generator could sit on top of my Digital Multimeter, but alias the stack was about 2" too high. Also, the width of the instrument bay was also completely pack, so I would have to remove a few instruments in order to get everything to fit.
First things first. Where was I going to come up with another two inches for my instrument bay? If I were to drop the instrument bay shelf by 2", I would be clipping off the top of my viewing window for my monitors. If I move the shelf above the instrument bay up 2", I would run out of room for the two storage container holding by cables, development boards and handheld instruments above. I quickly surmised that by raising the entire shelving system by 3" and then lowering the instrument bay bottom shelf by 2", I could achieve the first goal in this reorganization.
For the next step I needed to move a few items off the shelf in order to make room for the new power supply. The instruments that lost the there places are an older, single channel power supply (with a super noisy adjuster knob) and an older Programmable Load (analog load, also with a super noisy adjuster knob). With those selection complete, the hard and dirty work of removing all of the storage boxes and instruments began.
After finding temporary spaces for everything on the shelves, I made a quick trip down to my workshop to build some riser blocks to raise the wire shelving system. I had some left over pieces of 4"x4" (rough cedar) that I was able to plain down to smooth blocks. I further radiused all of the sharp edges off and then added small detents (1 1/4' flat holes, ~1/2" deep) into the tops of the blocks to allow the shelving systems legs to set into. With the woodworking phase of the project complete, it was back to work on adjusting and re-installing the shelving system.
The re-organization of the instrument bay also allowed be to reconfigure my power strip (3' long power strip with 12 outlets) so I could have a few open sockets, distributed across the strip. With everything placed back on the shelves, here are the results:
Here is the big picture. The red circles highlight the placement of the riser blocks (2 in front and 2 in back). The monitors are still highly viewable from my sitting position and the instruments are also conveniently located for viewing and adjustments. I still need to find a home for the 2-channel USB scope, with the current thinking that it might just become my mobile instrument that can travel with my laptop.
Here is a zoomed in image of the instrument bay.
The new instruments are now happily in place within the instrument bay. The Function/Arbitrary Waveform Generator (highlighted in red) and the 2-channel power supply (highlighted in light green) are ready and waiting to help out on the next project. (Note: I have some serious cleaning to do on the work surfaces as I have just completed a few projects and I have plenty of tools and parts to return to my storage bins.
Again, a big and heartfelt Thank you to element14 and tariq.ahmad in particular for giving us all a safe and rewarding place to meet and play while practicing of creative skills!
