The home lab of Paul Rako

What with my recent blog posts about Barrie Gilbert’s home lab, and Darryl Phillips’es home lab, and Alan Martin’s home lab, and my old post about Jim Williams home lab, I would be remiss if I didn’t snap a few pics of my own home lab. Click on any image to enlarge.

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This is my main bench. Since we should draw schematics from left to right, I like to put signal sources on the left. So on the top shelf to the left is a Wavetek model 130 function generator, an HP 8082 pulse generator, and a Keithley 228B current source. To the right on the top shelf are my nice Dovebid win when they closed the Pratt and Whitney rocket lab up on Metcalf road. Yeah, 4, spell that four, HP 3457A 7.5-digit 4-wire voltmeters. On the right of the shelf I have 4 HP 6632A power supplies, great for GPIB control. Since I took the picture, I have acquired a HP 6038A, a Kepco 60V 2A supply, and since I was horrified to see I never bought a triple-tracking supply, a GW GPC-3020 power supply.  Above the 4 HP rack supplies is a Strobotac, and above that a Schaffner NS6505 2.5kV, 1MHz high frequency test injector. Out of the picture is a Hipotronics M100A hipot tester. To the left of that way up top is a brown box with a wind speed meter good for checking airflow over heat sinks. That Sony FM radio in the middle was given to me by my parents when I went off to GMI (now Kettering University). You can also see an optical loupe sitting in front of the 4 power supplies. I started buying all kinds of magnification and viewing gizmos when the parts started getting small.

On the main work surface of the bench is a Bausch & Lomb inspection microscope, with a cantilever base so I can look and solder on work-under-test without disconnecting all the leads. Note the machinist’s magnifier headset hanging over the vertical post of the base. Behind that is a Sony/Tek AWG2020 arbitrary waveform generator, with the beloved Tektronix 2465B 400MHz analog scope on top of it. I have some generic power supplies in the middle. Then I have a LeCroy 9360 digital scope, with a HP 8590A spectrum analyzer on top of it. On the right of the bench proper, I have 5 current probes, showing I learned a thing or two from Alan Martin. The two racks have two AM503 and two AM503A probes, and on its side almost hidden by the blue post is the great P6042, which has much lower noise than the AM503 types. At the far right on another bench is my Tek 224 with 4-channel and GPIB options. Note the 4 high-dollar 50-ohm pass through BNC termniators on each of the inputs. That is sitting on top of a Kikusui PLZ303W active load. That is another thing Alan Martin taught me. The 300 and later series Kikusui have really good transient load response and low-voltage compliance. They work down to a volt or two.

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Here is my high-speed bench that is to the immediate right of the main bench. You can see the same Tek 224 and Kikusui PLZ303W active load at the left. Way above them on the top shelf is a pair of Hakko 850 hot-air solder stations. They are like a little reflow furnace in a wand. They are great to heat up ground planes on a board from underneath so you can de-solder a power part with good thermal connection to the plane. On the right is an HP 8657B GHz oscillator, an HP 8131A 500MHz pulse generator, and at the top is the magnificent Tek 11801B sampling oscilloscope, with 4 yes, spell that four SD24 TDR (time domain reflectometry) sampling heads, including one on the extension cable so you can get it close the circuit you are testing. Since this picture, I also snagged a HP 8620C sweep oscillator at the eFlea.

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None of this equipment is worth a dang unless you can build something to test. To the immediate left of the main bench is the fab bench. I will probably slide it out to the left to make it easer to sit at it. At the far right you can see the machinist magnifier and the illuminator for the microscope. Behind that is a spiffy toolbox I got from Fran Hoffart at the eFlea. To the left of that is a nice big Variac. Next I need a kW isolation transformer and I will be set. A pal scored an isolated Variac at the last eFlea and I am envious. In the middle is my magnificent Dynascope, a 3-D microscope you can look at like a screen. Patented and expensive but critical to reduce eye strain when assembling large PCBs (printed circuit boards) over hours or days. You can also see one of my two Metcals, with the power supply sitting on its side so the A/B switch moves side-to-side so it replicates which iron is powered. Yeah, that is the fantastic Metcal Talon iron to the right of the Dynascope. On the left is a couple of PanaVises and another tool box. Note the fantastic Hotweezer thermal stripper on the top of the box, along with a Princess hot-air gun. I talked about it in my prototyping article. I have since gotten a big-ol’ hair drier style hot air gun, to loosen glue on tablets that we take apart.

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Here is the back part of the lab. Like Darryl Phillips, I feel having an oven/refrigerator is critical. This one works on CO2 to cool, since I use the lab infrequently so liquid nitrogen would just burn off. To the left is my HP 3577A network analyzer sitting on top of its HP 35677B S-parameter unit. You can see an old guitar amp project above that, set up for a Zero deep-drawn aluminum case. My dear departed friend Bob Pease looks over all lab activities. Then I have some parts bins and a couple halogen lamps for photography shoots, about the only thing I have used the lab for recently with this job at EDN. I used to have dozens of those parts bins, but I took them to the eFlea and sold them off, since I find it easier to just buy the stuff I need from Digi-Key. You can order at 7:00 PM and get it by 10:30 the next morning, for crying out loud. Why keep a bunch of old and obsolete parts around? My protégé, the fantastic Francis Lau, just made me proud when he asked where he could get some dc motors for a robot project. He didn’t want to use the salvage yard since he might want to turn his project into a real product. I once burned myself using salvage parts for a client I was consulting to. When he loved the design and wanted 5000 more, I had to scramble to replace the switches and solenoids with real procurable parts I finally found at Newark.

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One of the things I am proud of is that I don’t use the drawers in the benches to store parts and old projects. They are high-value real estate and I have commonly-used things in them. Here is one drawer with some meters, a trusty high-end Fluke, a Fluke thermocouple meter, and a Fluke IR temperature head for the voltmeter. Also a Brüel & Kjær precision sound meter. Next I need the calibrator for that baby.

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Here is a drawer full of FET probes, and a pair of Tek P6015 HV probes. I have 2 LeCroy AP020 FET probes and they are the bee’s knees when it comes to working with the LeCroy 9360. I also have a Tek P6201 and P6137 probe. Can’t have enough Tek probes, something Jim Williams taught me.

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Above the probe drawer is a drawer full of leads, both BNC and SMA. I also stash my terminators here. You can see the N-to-BNC adapters I use with the HF equipment. Also, spare tubes for the Strobotac. That big harness of BNC cables was a real eFlea score; I think I paid 2 dollars for it.

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Another drawer has a much of shunts, load resistors and a big 100A Tek current probe P6303. I also have an extra head for the 50Mz current probe.

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And finally, because a couple years ago I felt that I had arrived at a certain station in life, I fulfilled a lifelong fantasy by buying both 24Ga and 18Ga sets of real Alpha PVC wire. I used to love Teflon, but it really is gummy and splits easy. This is the wire you want. This drawer also has the mainstay of all engineering, bus wire and duct tape. A roll of copper foil and an unused project box complete this drawer.