Just wondering if we’ll be having a group effort to prep for the Mouser gear? Very exciting but I wonder what we’re getting and where it will go Willing to help if my schedule is open.
[Alex Rhodes announcements:
Mouser Donation
Mouser is donating 4x fully-stocked benches to Electronics with ~$10k worth of
equipment
You raise an interesting question, previously I had heard they were donating two benches, the minutes say four and I can’t remember for sure what Alex actually said in the meeting.
Do we know for sure if it is four or two? And do we know the physical size of these benches?
The Amateur Radio SIG is having a meeting at 8AM saturday morning to work on some issues on the roof, but after that I expect we will be in Electronics helping to re-arrange things.
They were asked and they declined is what I was told. Talked with Robert last night and depending upon what @artg_dms wants to do, we may end up using multiple laptop lock cables to secure these to the Mouser Benches.
If we don’t do anything, it is pretty much a certainty they will walk off.
Dimensions of benches along with a little mock up of what is envisioned.
We hope to develop a relationship with mouser. The Dallas Makerspace has always tried to work with local companies from polyprinter to multicam and now mouser. This is almost $10K of goods when all said and done.
Length: 48 in.
Depth: 36 in.
Features:
· ESD lamination
· ESD shelf
· Two 8-outlet 115V 15A electrical panels with breakers
Yes, I’m in favor of actual ESD “grounding” at these benches. Most setups I’ve worked with use a 1M-ohm resistor in series with the bench, so you’re good up to about 6kV before fatal currents flow through you, then bench, and then to ground.
In that setup, if the bench were to become energized by contact (by someone assuming the bench is non-conductive, setting their plugged in PCB on it), it would be dangerous to anyone who might touch the bench surface while holding on to something else.
What a great opportunity. Mouser is a name Ive trusted for years for maintaining stock on semiconductors for small volume availability. There are others, but many of my personal orders go through mouser before the benches were a topic. They do a better job of catering to prototypers than some of the other vendors interested solely in socket count.
I’d bet space on the walls in that room can be employed to outfit that lab even further. If handled carefully, I’d bet space could have a logic analyzer, a vna, a pattern gernerator, bga soldering gear, etc. Given the number of great minds that come through that room, I’d bet mouser is just the first of many who want their name clearly visible in there.
I wonder could DMS members get discounts on their Mouser orders?
Can Mouser route technical questions about parts originating from DMS to appropriate semiconductor FAE staff?
Is there a centralized Mouser contact for parts ordering questions/concerns for DMSers?
Also, I have this question about cabling everything down: I am all in favor of protecting DMS valuables. I want the stuff to be there at DMS when I am there to work on my projects.
However, there are situations where sometimes the project won’t fit in the elab, and it would be nice to have say maybe a test-cart available to position ee equipment near whatever needs the probing. Example: Mazda. I used a scope on fuel injector lines to learn I was only getting single pulse to injectors, led me to solution for my non start condition.
I used the twintex scope, which is awful BTW, colors unreadable, as the others were marked to stay in elab. I wanted to use virtualbench, but it was tied down. So here is question: are we actually having probs with equipment walking? I ask because companies I’ve worked for all had valuable equip,and it floated atound where needed. Do we have to do the cord thing, or can we consider a checkout process with member responsible sorta thing? This is how I’ve seen big cos do it.
If we do get corded down, can we make a ‘test cart’ with good bench setup corded to cart? I can think of a whole bunch of times I wanted a DMS test cart.
DMS has filed charges against 2 individuals for theft. One was terribly egregious in that it involved a lot of the test equipment in the Electronics Lab that ended up being sold on eBay by the thief.
There are also a lot of missing hand tools in the lab.
It sucks to see Harbor Freight and other lowbrow brand multimeters in there instead of all the Fluke meters, but it just got old seeing the great quality stuff walking out the damn door.
Willing to help if my schedule is open.