Walter installed lights on the Mouser benches. Thank you Walter!
We are starting to mark E Lab tools w/ yellow plasti dip. See any tools that look like this - please return them to the E Lab.
Rich Meyer donated Metcal soldering tweezers - MX-Talon-01. Works w/ Metcal MX-500 soldering stations. Thank you Rich!
Tool wiki is being updated to add Mouser donation.
More in the works
Thanks
Can I use those soldering irons in automotive? 
Jk
Good job on the lights, for those of us with older eyes that will be helpful!
Why not, everything else in Electronics ends up being used on those nasty, green house gas spuming, destroyers of mother earth!
Hmmm…let’s see…soldering tweezers designed to be used on smd parts being used back in automotive. Doesn’t sound like a good idea. So no.
Any reason why Automotive can’t get their own soldering stations, meters, etc??
This soldering iron would probably suffice for most automotive applications where the hardware cannot easily be removed and taken into elab for more careful soldering:
ooooohhh, aaaaahhhhh… nice!
Does that say Radio Shack on the side?
I had attached the ebay one due to the $5 effect. You can take the engineer out of the East Texas trailer park, but you cant take the trailer park out of the engineer…
Red Bench is back up. Thank you @Shawn_Christian!
I saw those tweezers when I was in yesterday. Rich, I owe you a beer. You are about to save me a crapload of effort on a project involving a few too many SMDs.
A heads up - we don’t have the appropriate stand/holder for the tweezers - yet. It’s on a growing list.
Have you gotten the procurement officer credit card yet? It has been two weeks since that passed the board.
I saw electronics lab for the first time in weeks yesterday. It was quite nice. Has come a long way in the couple of years I have been around. Kudos to all those involved in improving that lab! I could envision some real innovation happening in that lab.
I had a wire stand at home – it’s a terrible stand, too light, needs rubber feet and some heft to it, but I used it to hold the terrible soldering tweezers I have at home.
Brought them by yesterday, and they’re now holding up the much better tweezers in the lab. There was only one bench that had both a Metcal and other SMD rework stuff, so I left the tweezers connected to the second output on the Metcal there and resting on that stand I brought.
We’ll still want to buy a better one, I’m sure, but for now it seems to do the trick.
Just a gentle reminder, not just for you but everyone. You need to talk with the committee chair and get their approval first, before donating or loaning anything. See 1.1 of the Rules
This is particularly a problem in Electronics where people seem to just leave stuff. In recent weeks we have had people leaving oscilliscopes and spectrum analyzers, as well as many other smaller assorted items.
@artg_dms has a bit of a hoarding issue and it really bothers him to just throw this junk out… so he has to spend time finding it a new home. Time better spent on organizing the stuff we already have as well as the numerous other duties as chair.
I would like to volunteer myself to help with taking unwanted equipment off DMS hands. If it is usable, or possibly usable equipment with 1 or 2 simple problems to be fixed, I would like to take a look at it. @artg_dms, if you need to find a loving home for equipment that maybe didn’t make DMS cut, let me know.
You missed the adjustable power supplies that were donated by a member. I repaired 'em and put them on the donor shelf for others to take and give good homes to. 
RJ
I missed a lot of really, really cool stuff as I labored away on project Mazda, completely outside my expertise. And what made that really painful is that I saw whole herds of crazy cool vintage top of the line in its time Tek and HP gear graze on past me slowly while I was working in DMS auto. So slow, they went, that one day, I even put stickers on some of them, but was too swamped with the auto rebuild to load the gear and cart if off.
After a day or two of awesome vintage gear sitting on shelves protected only by a little post it note with my name, and further complicated by the fact that I had not removed the items from the shelves, I did notice that the wind picked up considerably inside the facility. You could not actually feel this wind, but I know it was there as evidenced by the fact that my name tags started blowing off the gear one by one. The wind got so strong, that it started blowing these 60s, 70s, 80s era VNAs and Spec Ans completely off the shelves and kept blowing them to the point that I have no idea where they wound up…
I guess I was hot about if for about 5 seconds, but then the reality that I did not have time to work on that gear kept jabbing what I might most appropriately call my lack of a conscience when it comes to getting cool ass sh*t especially of an electronic nature. After expressing my frustration by pacing the parking lot while sending smoke signals to the American Spirit of Menthol, I laughed off the whole thing realizing that this was indeed the appropriate ending to my hoarding spazzz out sesssion…
Oh, that’s what I was going to suggest that we add to the electronics wiki: We need to clearly define the set of prerequisites to becoming an electronics committee member. And item #1 without question should be: a clear, visible, publicly demonstrated and documented incident illustrating obsessive affinity for electronics hoarding coupled with an uncharacteristic yet unmistakable lack of concern about what anybody else thought about it. We should also equip the lab with smelling salts and strong tranquilizers… there are some good sized fellas running around DMS… oh, and I need a way to win the next electronics hoarding showdown… lol…
Dang it, I knew that. Don’t know how I forgot about it. My bad. I just figured I’d leave them there since it was mentioned in this thread that we needed them. @artg_dms, let me know if I need to take it back.
I have a spare tweezer stand. I’ll bring it by next time I’m at the space.
