Cool Tools Bench Awards 2018

This is the space I have.

This might be late, but I thought I'd add my photos of my workbench ... for the last couple of days anyway.

The first three images are trying to trace the problem that has seen this out of action for three years,

As a result the climate hasn't been kind and dust and debris has found it's way in, and required Meths, a toothbrush and some scrubbing, ...... this wasn't the cause though.

The last image is where things wear out from use.....

These are standard panel mount buttons, and screw into the holder.

I had to rob two unused ones from another machine and I'll chase down some new ones as whatever is left is worn out.

I suspect there will be only a few people can guess what office space this is from, so I'll add a couple of other images as clues.

The windscreen is broken from having objects inside, and then tilting the cab forward ....

They are heated screens and usually several thousand dollars to replace, hence they tend to stay damaged as insurance doesn't cover them.

It's the middle one of these ....

The problem started a few years ago, when it stripped a pump spline, which rendered it one track drive only, and after fixing the pump, it was steering strangely.

They use an electronic control system to provide a voltage to the hydraulic pumps (one for each track) and it is a proportional steering, so the more you turn the more one track drives until full lock and it will reverse the stopped track to spin it on the spot.

It all works great until it doesn't, and this one was intermittant, despite various attempts.

So this week I went up and tackled it.

We replaced the steering pot (which is a pain), and then fixed the pot that allows you to slow down the drive while keeping the revs up for tilling.

Both these were causing issues which looked like the problem.

Once these had been replaced and setup, I had it all working great ... doing donuts in these things is a blast ... right up until I put the covers back on and it wouldn't turn left .... it just stopped, right turns were fine.

The end cause was the flexible cable that goes through the steering column ... every wire had broken and when you put it all back together it was flexing at the broken spot. While you had the steering wheel cover off and the cable had come up the column a little, it worked fine.

Two days later, some frankenstein with a cable that will work for a while and it is back in action ready to clear the road if necessary.

I still have to chase down a 7 core flexible cable for a permanent fix at some point, but I'll make sure we have enough for a couple of others just in case.

Mark

this my work bench at home

A little half-time entertainment...

Thought I'd drop in with the pic of the day...I'm making homemade laser-assisted blow guns for my girl and me...almost done with the first one.

It's being adjusted for it's final "sighting in" so that the dart hits where the dot is. (Not a mystery; fire the dart and then adjust the 8 azimuth/elevation screws until the laser's on the dart.) The 90 degree elbow makes process easier.

My desk never looks the same way twice, I think. For smaller projects, I just move stuff out of the way and/or work off of the vise.

Well...back to the originally-scheduled waiting...

Hi Rod,

Here is another article about the Phosphor vs DSO scopes.

http://www.electronicdesign.com/test-measurement/what-s-difference-between-dso-and-dpo

They point out that the Phosphor Scope concept isn't that new and that many high end scopes have had some form of this ability for sometime. It just hasn't been called Phosphor so your persistence is probably just another name for a similar feature on a high end scope.  Recent processing improvements in hardware and software have made the feature much more accessible and of course someone went and branded the feature with "Phosphor".

John

Hi John,

Is DSO Phosphor the same thing as Display Persistence ?

On the Tektronix digital 'scopes I use at work you can set the decay rate for persistence - keeping it at a long delay is good for finding glitches/low probability events etc whilst you can also turn it off completely for a really crisp and sharp snapshot. These 'scopes are a good 15 years+ old so I can only imagine digital phosphor functionality is even better now.

Rod

Ah interesting idea, mine doesn't do that afaik but I haven't finished reading the manual yet.

Hi Derek,

http://www.uni-trend.com/productsdetail_1003_852_852.html

The Phosphor in this context refers to the way the DSO handles signals. It acts like a phosphor in that it retains a memory of the repetition rate of signals. For example if you were looking a a signal that had a predominant feature and some other features that only occurred 10 or 20% of the time the lower occurrence rate features would show as a lighter trace. It is pretty cool and I am eager to learn more about this type of scope. Check out the link above if you want to see what I am talking about.

John

I'm a novice to scopes but I'm finding it quite easy to learn and use so far.

It's an LCD so I don't think it uses phosphor at all, that's CRT Tech?

Cool Tools Bench Awards 2018 - Week 1 Winners!

Cool Tools Bench Awards 2018 - Week 2 Winners!