Show us your hobby workbench

my shtuff..

My home work area:

Contruction:
Bench drill press, dremel, die & punch, many types of saws, rivet tools, clamps & PCB holders, table vice & more

Solering:
3 fixed watt irons, 2 adjustable Hakko soldering stations, one hakko hot air desoldering station & heat gun. 4 different solder types including lead free, 2 flux types.

Chemicals:
DiuF water, genesolve flux remover, freeze sprays, contact cleaner, copper cleaner, 99% iso alcohol.

Testing & equipment:

Power supplies: 4 250W adjustable LOCO linear floating supplies, one lambda adjustable 20W. Keithley Model 2400 source measure unit.

O'scopes: 2 4-channel 100MHz analog tek scopes. Boatload of older analog scopes all 100MHz. 1 Protek 60MHz 2 channel analog scope. 1 TDS220 digital storage scope. (cant put myself up to throwing out the older scopes since they work fine)

Function: 2 BK precision 2MHz function generators. Boonton capacitance meter, BK precision LCR meter.

DMM: KI model 2000 DMM, fluke 50000 count handheld. couple other no-name handhelds 4-1/2 digit meters. 2015 distortion analyzer.

Components: everything under the sun...

Software: professional version of Eagle PCB design. Older Protel PCB design software. Professional version of superspice simulation software, a couple freeware simulators like switchercad.

Other stuff for e-design: occasionally use emachineshop for mechanical parts, MS visio for nice drawings (block diagrams etc..), professional version mathcad for math stuff.

Still on the lookout for: spectrum analyzer, better DSO preferably tek (like TDS305x series)

All that eqipment must be worth a LLLLOOOOTTTT of $$$

look at of you guys with your fancy pants electrical equipment and workbenches...I just have a DMM and a very cluttered desk in my room. I used to have a nice DSO until it fell and broke.
Note: a snowblower may look like a good oscilloscope stand at first, but it really isnt...Good thing I only paid $6.25 for it ($0.25/lb for scrapped electrical equipment from work)
Hey optikon, if you have anything lying around that you are thinking about scrapping, I might take it off your hands.

Luckily there are some decent EE labs at school that I can tinker in.

This is the mess on the table i made today whith my coilgun experementing.

I got an 2 x 45 mm iron rod flying at 30km/h

The mic is conected to my PC to record the fireing sound and the sound of the rod hiting the traget.The les miliseconds it tock the faster it went.(Thats how i caculated the speed)

The 4 caps are in a voltage dubler so its the same as one 20 000uF 128V cap.

Yea that rod goes damn fast.

In one fire i almost hit the light bulb.

The coil is 0,2 Ohm and the caps are charged to 100V.So mr. Ohm says there is 500A going trough it

I didnt use that fancy SCR and timing stuff. I just had an mechanical switch that makes an REALY bright spark.

Thats how I measure speeds! You should if working with high speeds however, put the mic centrally between the muzzle and target plate, to equalise sound travel times. I have a LEGO thing that uses 3 of the the little ink cartidges from inside biros, empied of ink to form a 1mm diameter barrell. Then, I use the LEGO pnumatic system to release compressed air into it. Using a suitable size piece of wire inside that barrell and a bit of water to seal it, it can travel at 190kmh. Its incredibly light, but zips through grapes, makes holes in sheets of paper balancing on edge without knocking them down and leaves one hell of a mark :lol: . Obviously, care is taken using it. Range is suprisingly large, it takes a very long time to come back to earth if fires upwards, I might time it, should be easy to do.

Anyhow :lol: , I don't have a real workbench either, I take things and use them as I need them. Am still working on getting a proper power supply, batteries arn't doing it for me

Talking about oscilloscope bandwidths, I used to have a Philips analouge scope that was capable of 2Ghz. I also had a really nice Pace SMD rework station, both of which were stolen in a burglary at my home over a year ago now :-(

Now I have proper home insurance which covers my equipment.

Brian

But this rod is heavyer.If it hits an solid object qite a lot of force is made.It can probobly crack an window if yoi fire at it.It once bounced from an plastic box in to an glass of juce on the table and it made an afuly loud ping.The glass is luckuly still on one pece.It it was a direct hit it wod mostprobobly break.

I had to make the fiering platform heavyer to becose the recoil moves the whole thing.

It may be interesting to put an nedle in it to see if it wod enbed it self in frout or styrofoam.

Il do some more testing tomorow.

Oh and wen i fire the triger switch I can feal the heat that is made in the spark from about 15 cm! So thats a lot of IR made by that spark.

I didnt yet try to fire screws.Since i have it "calibrated" for that iron rod.

I wont go any lower whith the coils resistance since 0.2Ohm makes an huge sprk on thurn on.

The rod got magnetised after the first shot.(This shod be able to realy screw up TVs and monitors)

Anyway heres the diary of the speeds:
first atempt: 11 km/h
beter coil : 24 km/h
more caps: 30km/h

Yeah, 30kmh is good going for coilguns, they are generally regarded as very inefficient. If you are just experimenting, thats cool, but if you really wanted to make an improvement you should try an SCR. You can get a suitable one for just £3 or so (400A peak, 1000v) and they are very easy to use. That heat from the spark is essentially wasted energy, an SCR should stay pretty cool in use.

I would like to experiment with coilguns, I think the beauty of it is how it can be totally silent. They can get pretty expensive pretty quickly though, those capacitors are costly. Where do you get your 100volts from by the way? I wouldn't like to try it with the mains, thats always put me off, the fairly high voltages needed.

We have 220V mains over here.

I use an trasformer used in a VCR.It has many voltages including an 50V winding that was used for an VFD.

I have them wired in an voltage dubler that makes it 100V.This also makes full use of the cap.(Simply wiering then serial halfs the capacitence and that is bad)

The caps ware $13 in US cash.

Anyway i made the switch beter my giving it a much biger surface therfore making less resistance over the contats and les voltage loss.

Also the fire is not that loud.Expecialy wen puting it in a box.So the fireing is not all the loud.But it is realy loud wen the projectile hits the target()

I also had an coil out of 0,4 mm wire and it got prety hot after one fireing(Almost too hot to toch)

Also the original crocodile clip wires ware certanly not up for the job so i replaced then whith much thicker wires.

Anynyway its completly isolated from the mains.And not a lot of wires exposed.

I also once got a good leson from an 10 uF cap charged to about 250 V.It felt like i got stung in my finger by a nedle.

Oh and 100V is not so high wen talking about coil guns.Some use up to 1kV(Prethy big caps too)

A guy made an coil gun that worked of an batery and was able to fire an projectile right trough an soda can like nothing.And he had lots and lots of caps.

But coil guns are pretly cool is you ask me.There is just an iron rod adn then a pop and its gone.Its just like magic.

Yeah, they are pretty great, that coilgun pistol someone posted a link to a while ago was amazing! I've seen Sam barros coilguns, they use crazy voltages and capacitors, instant death if you touched any of them. Is there any danger of damaging magnetic tapes in close proximity with something like this? There must be a pretty significant EMP.

Nope.

I didnt notice such things.

Radio and TVs worked fine.

Woo i just noticed that it makes cracks in the plastic of an CD box.

Prety powerful

I made an short video of the coil gun fiering at varius objects

**broken link removed**

Almost all of the shots worked the first time but the whitebord marker just didnt want to co-operate.1stt try i mised the start recording button,2nd try i mised the pen(But hit the wall and almost bounced back in my head).3rd try i fogot to put in the projetile(Dough!!! )the 4th try it finaly worked!

You can also see my hand hiting the fire button.

You can also hear that the gun is not all that lound. Just the faint pop of the switch.

I put the web cam on my telescope stand.Thats why those translation efects look so good.

the video is about 2 MB becose i made it 30 fps (The fastest my web cam can do) i case you want to freze frames to see the projetile in mid air and stuff like that.

Evryting is blown out of its path.

Hiya Guy's,
As I just got all my dad's machinery and gear I'm totally revamping my workshop so in the near future I can show you guy's some photo's. Anyway a bit of an insight the workshop basically runs on solar as I don't have mains power on the farm. On the machineshop side I have 2 lathes, 2 milling machines 1 surface grinder 2 drill presses, a full range of woodworking machinery and on the electronic side there's too much to mention. But the whole theme is green and mean, I'll use solar where I can and set up a mini hydro to run a 5kva alternator. Anyway guys the pic's will come but I've a heap of work to do first.

Cheers Bryan

I'd be very interested to see the solar panel part! Will look forward to it.

Brian

Well mate Ive got a 8 panel solar array and each panel is 65 watts, that runs a 400 amp hour 24 volt array along with a 1700 watt inverter and I also have a bank of 12 nife batteries seup as a 12 volt array supplied by 1 80 watt solar panel, this setup supplies a bank of 12 volt lights and a rail for my 12 volt motors. In the near future I'll be adding both wind power and a microhydro setup and replacing all my 3 phase motors with single phase so I can use the battery banks. As the cost of fuel is getting more expensive by the day being green will give me a huge advantage in business. By the way if you check out the map that Jeff has supplied I have put the exact position of my 85 acre farm so take a look but it's shame the resolution can't be greater.

Cheers Bryan

Thats prety nice!!!

Like the coildgun video! Thats cool the way you just press that button and the tube jumps back, almost silent it seems.

Yea it is prety silent if you comare it to the other noises.

If there wasent that paper clamper behind it it wod be blown off the table.

Im curently experemeting whith the coil.

The new coil is almsot completly silent.It just makes an tup sound

edit: Its so silent im having problems whith the microphone speed meshurments.(Im woryed about mistaking noise for the fireing sound)