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Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

badar.tech

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Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#231

Post by loph »

bsder wrote: post #92

The only argument I have would be the soldering irons. You really want a Metcal or Thermaltronics station. They're just so much better that it's ridiculous. Yes, they are expensive. However, you will have them forever . And you will never have to worry about too much heat, too little heat, or calibration ever again. Your soldering will be so dramatically better that you will wonder how you ever did without them.

I love my metcal. It was so expensive I had to buy it from a surplus store. there is no substitute. Also use a lot of Weller, but I have had them for a very long time.

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#232

Post by pwg »

jtwaleson wrote: post #227
dekhn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent some 40 years learning electronics. Started with the hydraulic analogy, but didn't really have any deep understanding. In college they made us do a physics lab with an ocope and RC circuits, and I was miserably. Who cares if you can use discrete components to make a curve when you have a 486? Years later I landed on a team of makers and started to work on ambitious projects- various high power LEDs, motion…

Thanks, I've been doubting whether to buy a oscilloscope or not for about two years and your comment pushed me over the edge. I just ordered a Siglent SDS1104X-E. I have the same lack of intuition for electronics and I hope seeing the behavior will help me build a better mental model.

You may want to watch this eevblog video since you just ordered a scope:

EEVblog #279 - How NOT To Blow Up Your Oscilloscope!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaELqAo4kkQ

It goes into detail about how the ground lead on the probes is ground and the fact that you have to pay attention to where you are connecting them otherwise you can create a short circuit. Note that all the probe grounds are connected together, so connecting two ground leads to two different circuit nodes effectively shorts those two nodes together.

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#233

Post by highdeserthackr »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #18

I see a fume extractor under the desk. As someone who was in the market for one recently, I'd love some discussion (like loudness, price, performance, etc).

I solder in the garage, never indoors. My bench has a 6" inline duct fan near the soldering station and I just run the fumes out a long section of ducting. These fans high cfm and crazy quiet. Everything stows away easily when not in use.

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#234

Post by crispyambulance »

tempodox wrote: post #62
crispyambulance wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I bet the guy has an ESD mat and it was just too ugly to show. The only other thing I would add is boxes or large bins. Not for tools or components, but for project work, so you can put it away and work on something else when you need to. Otherwise it ends up spread all over your desk, Jim Williams style: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mightyohm/6926143499 (which is now at the computer history museum, apparently…

That's what I think of when I read “electronics lab bench”. The one in the article is so clean and well organized, I'm getting jealous.

FWIW, Jim Williams was an electronics designer at Linear Technologies (LT, now part of Analog Devices). He had incredible productivity and wrote famously epic application notes.

He was also known for using bare, un-eteched copper PCB and just soldering components to the PCB and connecting their other leads with wire through the air. You can see this on his bench!

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#235

Post by _yb2s »

penguin_booze wrote: post #87

I used be an ameteur electronics enthusiast. When I was young, I used to assemble trivial circuits (dancing lights etc.): I could go to an electronics shop. They used to sell hobby kits for simple, accessible, devices. The kit had circuit layout, component list, labels, what goes where and all. I then assembled them per the layout ("this leg of the transistor goes to the left leg of the capacitor"). It worked - I use…

I hear a lot of negative things about using “plumbing” metaphors for teaching electronics, but it has always worked for me. I have an intuitive understanding of what each part does through physical analogy with water pressure, and can design fairly complex analog circuits that work based on it. For example, I see a capacitor as a stretchy membrane… it can’t pass electricity/water, but can stretch to absorb energy and release it later. It can conduct pressure waves by oscillating (ac).

Edit: this is a good description https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/understa....

To be fair, I have a physics and engineering background and do really understand how these components actually work, and where this metaphor breaks down, but I still find this mental model is what I use to intuitively design circuits that work.

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#236

Post by [deleted] »

CarVac wrote: post #145

I urge people to ditch leaded solder in favor of lead-free. Most difficulties people have in using lead-free comes from one of three things: 1. a poor soldering iron 2. bad quality solder (the cheap stuff with bad flux is bad, duh) 3. poor technique (among other things, wipe your tip just before using, not before putting it away) I like the Chipquik SAC305 with no-clean flux and other people I've recommended it to fi…

[deleted]

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#237

Post by jtwaleson »

pwg wrote: post #232
jtwaleson wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I've been doubting whether to buy a oscilloscope or not for about two years and your comment pushed me over the edge. I just ordered a Siglent SDS1104X-E. I have the same lack of intuition for electronics and I hope seeing the behavior will help me build a better mental model.

You may want to watch this eevblog video since you just ordered a scope: EEVblog #279 - How NOT To Blow Up Your Oscilloscope! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaELqAo4kkQ It goes into detail about how the ground lead on the probes is ground and the fact that you have to pay attention to where you are connecting them otherwise you can create a short circuit. Note that all the probe grounds are connected together, so co…

Will do, thanks!

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#238

Post by lukego »

crote wrote: post #156
CarVac wrote: post #145

I urge people to ditch leaded solder in favor of lead-free. Most difficulties people have in using lead-free comes from one of three things: 1. a poor soldering iron 2. bad quality solder (the cheap stuff with bad flux is bad, duh) 3. poor technique (among other things, wipe your tip just before using, not before putting it away) I like the Chipquik SAC305 with no-clean flux and other people I've recommended it to fi…

The biggest difference is that an improperly soldered leaded joint looks very obviously wrong, whereas a good lead-free joint can be pretty much indistinguishable from a bad one. If you are just starting out - and will therefore by definition have a poor iron, cheap solder, and poor technique - leaded is definitely the way to go. Once your first spool of leaded runs out, it is probably time to switch to lead-free.

I often mix up the shininess of leaded solder with the shininess of tacly flux under a ring-lit microscope. Can be hard for me to know if the joint is complete or partly made of goo.

The cloudy diffuse look of lead-free SAC305 is more distinctive to my eye.

Re: Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

#240

Post by stacktrust »

tverbeure wrote: post #34

Something isn’t right. You can see the bench surface.

They added another photo to the article :)

> Since there were so many comments about how clean the bench is, I just wanted to leave this here to show how it normally looks when I am working on it.

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