What did you do today?

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

I just got back from a 4 day trip to Oregon that stretched to 2 weeks.

Cool, I'll be in Hillsboro, Oregon for a few days in a few weeks.

[Jim Stewart]

Dan, we've got family in Oregon. Where was this storm? Around Eugene?

Oh, just a small point: with a Cadillac in the driveway, how is it that you had battery problems with your phone? Car chargers are a good thing...

-js

[J Tiers]

Continuing with the "clean up the shop" project, that got overlaid on others when I had to move too much to do what I wanted to do......

Today's project was to finish fixing a problem with a multimeter, which had a bad ribbon jumper between two PWBs. The ribbon jumper had some delamination, and at least one conductor appeared to be cracked where it was accordion-folded at the factory. Some functions were intermittent, and the audible function on the ohms was always on in certain functions, including AC volts.

I replaced the bad jumper with 30 fine stranded wires, which seems to have fixed the intermittent issue. Unfortunately it did not fix the puzzling continuous audible function, which appeared to be due to the jumper as well. So I do NOT get to take that meter off the "to be fixed" shelf today. I will have to evaluate how much more work I am willing to do on the thing. I have other multimeters.

The innards, with wiresalong with the bad jumper. I do not know yet if the wires will crosstalk in a bad way.. lining them up is like herding grasshoppers.


One of the delaminated areas

[danlb]

Dan, we've got family in Oregon. Where was this storm? Around Eugene?

Oh, just a small point: with a Cadillac in the driveway, how is it that you had battery problems with your phone? Car chargers are a good thing...

-js

I think that the storm was from Eugene down to Grants Pass. It was hard to tell with no TV or internet. Because the storm dropped more snow at one time than any storm they have seen in decades, trees were toppling and branches breaking all over the place. One road had over a thousand downed trees blocking it. Mom's property had a fallen 12 inch branch from an oak tree. Her 3 block long street had two fallen utility lines across the road. About 50,000 people were without power, many in rural areas where a downed power line would impact a few dozen houses. Our hotel was in Roseburg (20,000 people) and it took forever to get power back to that section of town.

You ask of car chargers. We had the car at the hotel, but it was my Mom's and had no charging ports nor charging cords. I was surprised that a 2010 luxury car did not have USB ports in it. Neither did it have the spare batteries or emergency flashlights that I keep in my car. The hotel clerk found a cord but we had no where to plug it in. We finally got to an open supermarket to pick up supplies on the third day. Mom now has a car charger and cord in her car.

She now has $700 of good quality mud+snow tires too! That was the other key learning. Good touring tires are worthless on snow and ice. The right tires can keep you going (and going straight) on a few inches of snow, even up hill!

Dan

[J Tiers]

Snow tires are OK, but may not be essential.

I grew up in Minnesota, back when it actually got cold and snowed up there. We never ever put snow tires on any of the cars, and had no big troubles.

A lot of it depends on the car. Probably that car would need them. The old SAAB sedans and wagons with front wheel drive (50 years ago) did not need them, although snow tires could hae helped. The Volvo wagon (RWD) does not, the pickup does OK but would probably benefit from them. Nothing will save a Camaro.

I would say thatfor people who are not used to driving in snow, snow tires are probably good, bit of course you have to have them on the car. In areas where snow is rare, people would benefit, but the tires need to already be on the car when the snow occurs, even though they may not ever be needed in a given year. That is usually the problem, not having them on when a surprise snow happens.

[Mike Amick]

Continuing with the "clean up the shop" project, that got overlaid on others when I had to move too much to do what I wanted to do......

Today's project was to finish fixing a problem with a multimeter, which had a bad ribbon jumper between two PWBs. The ribbon jumper had some delamination, and at least one conductor appeared to be cracked where it was accordion-folded at the factory. Some functions were intermittent, and the audible function on the ohms was always on in certain functions, including AC volts.

I replaced the bad jumper with 30 fine stranded wires, which seems to have fixed the intermittent issue. Unfortunately it did not fix the puzzling continuous audible function, which appeared to be due to the jumper as well. So I do NOT get to take that meter off the "to be fixed" shelf today. I will have to evaluate how much more work I am willing to do on the thing. I have other multimeters.

The innards, with wiresalong with the bad jumper. I do not know yet if the wires will crosstalk in a bad way.. lining them up is like herding grasshoppers.


One of the delaminated areas

Hey, what temp do you keep your Soldering Iron? (for that job) Nice job btw.

[JRouche]

It's a Deckel FP2 gib (steel, not CI btw) for the vertical table that goes in the X-direction.

Well yeah, it looks like steel. Why would you think it was cast?

The bending of the gib automatically places it as a steel. JR

[JRouche]

DennisCA

Thanks for your reply. I loved the story and look forward to more of it. JR

Oh, on a side note.

Dont ever drop your Z axis, top gib into the column. I did. not nice. JR

[J Tiers]

Hey, what temp do you keep your Soldering Iron? (for that job)

It does not actually show temp on the dial, but about 3/4 of the way up the dial. Not crazy hot, but hot enough that the solder was not slow to flow. The iron will use lead free at max, this was tin-lead, which I like a lot better for hand soldering. I usually run the iron hot and rely on timing to keep things from getting overheated. An iron not hot enough peels more foil that one that is hot, but not there very long.

I'm still on the fence about diddling with the beeper problem. It's one of those "I've already got time in this" deals, where the time is wasted if you don;t fix it, but even more is wasted if you find the problem is not fixable when you do tack it down. It's just a Fluke meter, an older 8024 IIRC, and not true rms.

I did use a flux pen on the connections, so another session of cleaning the PWB there may be called for, at least.

[MattiJ]

I think that the storm was from Eugene down to Grants Pass. It was hard to tell with no TV or internet. Because the storm dropped more snow at one time than any storm they have seen in decades, trees were toppling and branches breaking all over the place. One road had over a thousand downed trees blocking it. Mom's property had a fallen 12 inch branch from an oak tree. Her 3 block long street had two fallen utility lines across the road. About 50,000 people were without power, many in rural areas where a downed power line would impact a few dozen houses. Our hotel was in Roseburg (20,000 people) and it took forever to get power back to that section of town.

You ask of car chargers. We had the car at the hotel, but it was my Mom's and had no charging ports nor charging cords. I was surprised that a 2010 luxury car did not have USB ports in it. Neither did it have the spare batteries or emergency flashlights that I keep in my car. The hotel clerk found a cord but we had no where to plug it in. We finally got to an open supermarket to pick up supplies on the third day. Mom now has a car charger and cord in her car.

She now has $700 of good quality mud+snow tires too! That was the other key learning. Good touring tires are worthless on snow and ice. The right tires can keep you going (and going straight) on a few inches of snow, even up hill!

Dan

1970's Saab would have climbed easily over 12" branch even with summer tires. Just ask Jerry

Summer tires are usually hopeless on snow and especially ice, mud&snow bit better but usually not a match for a real "winter" tire.
Some M+S tires are horribly bad on even a slightly icy conditions.

In here we of course drive with Saabs and Volvos equipped with these:

[PStechPaul]

Studded tires are generally not allowed on most roads here. I have a couple sets of tire chains that I have used in the past, on my 1966 Econoline van, 1977 Toyota Corolla, and 1982 Toyota long bed pickup (2WD). They got me through all sorts of nasty snow and ice conditions, especially when I had the rear heavily weighted. They are a bit of a hassle getting on and off, though, and speed is limited to 30-40 MPH. I haven't used them on my 1989 4WD Toyota Pickup, or my FWD Saturns or my present Honda Fit. But I really don't need to go out in the snow, so I don't.

https://www.autozone.com/snow-chains/tire-snow-chain/quality-chain-tire-snow-chain/492440_0_0

But I didn't have the fancy six point tensioner - just bungee cords and rubber straps.

[DennisCA]

Well yeah, it looks like steel. Why would you think it was cast?

The bending of the gib automatically places it as a steel. JR

Pavlovian response, I have had to explain that so many times that I have started doing it unprompted.

The Gib seems straight by the way.

[Bob Engelhardt]

... Unfortunately it did not fix the puzzling continuous audible function ... I will have to evaluate how much more work I am willing to do on the thing. ...

Cut the orange wire.

[J Tiers]

Studded tires have been illegal for decades. Tye completely tore up the roads.

1970's Saab would have climbed easily over 12" branch even with summer tires. Just ask Jerry

Bulll****, ya jaybird..... nothing over 4"..... And the SAAB was not as good in snow as the Volvo... too light, and the solid floor pan tended to ride up on snow. The FWD was fun though.... people back then were totally freaked out at the sight of the FRONT wheels spinning....

[J Tiers]

Cut the orange wire.

That would be good if I never wanted to USE that function.... but I would like it to work.

And there is also an interaction of that function with at least one other function that needs fixed. presumably a bad component, and NOT the ground interaction I suspected was part of the bad ribbon wire. A case of there really being two problems at once... not common but does happen.