Home lab - a must for every designer

As a retired old timer I have gathered some toys over the years to keep me busy and regard as very precious, much to the dismay of my wife.

Here is a list of my most valuable equipment that I won't easily part with.

It will be very interesting to hear from other members to what they keep in their home lab.

Scopes: Tek 465, 475, 485, TDS 220, Philips PM 3295
Comms anal: HP8920A, R & S CMT54, Motorola 2002
Network anal: HP8505/01/02 with S-param test set.
Spectrum: (2)IFR AN920, Tek 2754
Dyn sig anal: HP3561A
Logic anal: HP1651A
Mod anal: HP8901A
Meter calibrator: HP 6920B
Current probes/module: Tek AM503 w probes
Scope calibrator: Tek TM504 w SG503/PG506/TG501 modules
Power meters: (2) Racal Dana 9303, HP437B with various heads
Counters: EIP 575B, Stanford Research SR 620, Philips 6652C, HP 5350B
Dist anal: Kronhite 6800, Hameg 8027
Function gen: (2)Stanford Research DS 345, Tek FG 501
Freq standard: 10MHz Rub-GPS disciplined
Meters: Fluke 77,79,87, Phil PM2534 and a trusty old AVO 8 of course!
Grundig-300 digimess RLC meter
Roland CNC mill with software for making home pcb's
PIC 2000 ICE

Good supply of electronic components

A variety of power supplies, soldering irons, power loads, variacs and other components and junk to keep some of the older equipment alive when needed.

E

Hello E-design,

ADMIRE! Your toys is far more than all the tools that my lab can gather. I wish one day I have one third of your toys, maybe a dream

Cheers,

Davy Zhu

Here is a tip. :wink: Military auctions is a good source for picking up things cheap. Only about 30% of my stuff I bought new.

In the area of piece components, it is important to have them organized for easy access. Much time can be wasted sorting through a box of parts for the right one.

Some suppliers sell kits of parts of different types and value ranges.

Yes I agree. I have these stackable plastic drawers that keeps growing.

I found some of the pricing of these suppliers that make up these part selections to be expensive.

It is important to have at least a full standard range of resistors leaded and SM as well as ceramic caps up to .22uF, and a few selected values of electrolytic caps.

For SM components I found keeping them in small letter envelopes arranged in sequence in a flat box makes it easy to store and to search for the right value

I also like to keep a good selection of CMOS/TTL chips and some other basic things like regulators, diodes etc.

:? Hi E-Design,
How many $$$ have you spent on buying that kind a stuff.
Do you get them calibrated each year ?.

Like I said about 30% bought new, the rest auctions. Yes they get calibrated, a good friend of mine owns a cal facility (Actually, I go and do the cal work myself and buy a few beers for using the lab)

Hi
I can only afford virtual instruments base on PC,such as DSO29XX.The function and features are similar with HP546XX.


**broken link removed**


ynhe