Renewed Interest

[chookey]

Some of you will recall that I put some of my test equipment up for sale a short while ago. This time in isolation, 56 days thus far has given me my appetite for fault finding back. Coupled with the fact that I am recovering from my recent health scare, I am looking to upgrade some of my equipment rather than getting rid. Should really leave YouTube videos alone but they're one of the few things keeping me sane.

My finger has been poised over the buy now button for a microscope camera system from our beloved China for the past 2 days. Not a money issue, just trying to convince myself it's not a fad/folly. Previously I would only buy through necessity or through the knowledge that the item would pay for itself. This probably doesn't apply in this case but I want it badly.

What do you think? I'm opting for the system with column and without support for U disk storage. I'd never actually heard of that storage system before and can see no benefit to me having it.
This guy did a decent review on it. Best start around 5min 20 secs to see what it's capable of.

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I sold my Peak Atlas ESR meter to Spectre. It doubled up as my short circuit finder due to it's ability to read very small resistances. So I am now also looking to buy the Flir One Pro to plug into my iPhone. Decisions decisions

 

[trevortron]

I love my little Atlas ESR meter, had it for years, but that Flir does look interesting.
Do bear in mind if you order that 'scope from China you could end up with a hefty customs bill too!

 

[chookey]

I love my little Atlas ESR meter, had it for years, but that Flir does look interesting.
Do bear in mind if you order that 'scope from China you could end up with a hefty customs bill too!

Yes mate, expecting quite a bill but I reckon it's worth it. Still haven't managed to hit the buy it now button yet though Seen a flir on ebay that has been used for 10 minutes for a project and at the moment my £280 bid is winning. I believe the 10 minute bit, the photo shows a desk in the background that looks to be brimming with out of focus tech. Looks like an office more than a workshop.

That was the 2nd Atlas ESR I had got rid off. The first one went to a tech in Australia. He was one of the old school from Television magazine and he reckoned he couldn't get them there at the time. I contributed a couple of articles there in the past, don't I remember you doing similar?

 

[Spectre]

I'd like a microscope with a good depth of field. Another consideration, if you are using it for rework, is the lag. I think it was YouTuber Louis Rossmann that I watched explain what he thought made a good rework microscope. You might want to look that up.

I'd probably struggle with the delay if I was reworking something. Also, I'm not sure about exposing a CCD to some wavelengths.

I bought a third-user Mitotoyu FS-60 a few years ago, with digital micrometer stages, and a nearly full suite of M-Plan Apochromatic objectives. It was for wafer inspection originally and the depth of field isn't great, no use for rework.

Some pictures from it, camera is an AVT Oscar, mounted on the third port:

Nagra Hex block Decryption

Waffling a bit, I've been at the Russian Standard .

 

[chookey]

I've probably already seen that vid from Louis. The lag won't be so noticeable with the above setup 1080p @60fps. I have used a microsoft webcam with a lens conversion for rework and the lag was barely noticeable on that.
Lens and video here

How did you decap the romcard mate?

 

[Spectre]

I've probably already seen that vid from Louis. The lag won't be so noticeable with the above setup 1080p @60fps. I have used a microsoft webcam with a lens conversion for rework and the lag was barely noticeable on that.
Lens and video here

How did you decap the romcard mate?

Acetone for the plastic and heat for the stuff on the silicon.

 

[Spectre]

I priced one up for work.

It was over £26k from Edmund Optics.

The one I have is a bit over £30k. I didn't pay that! Resale options of these aren't great.

 

[chookey]

Acetone for the plastic and heat for the stuff on the silicon.

I have a number of old funcards here, may give it a go,lol. My finger still hasn't managed to push the buy it now button, can't imagine what your setup would reach on ebay.
My biggest regret concerning equipment was not buying a Pace IR 3000 bga rework system. It was being sold on my local Gumtree site for £2000. The seller had replaced it with a superior model.

 

[Spectre]

Actually @chookey, I have a fully decapped ROM10. The tamper mesh is not there, none.

Useless now but I did it .

I did it without hydroflouric acid, although I was in talks with someone that had some. I don't want that near me.

I'm sure you know that you can reverse-engineer the CPU if you can see the gates .

It was a little project of mine. Hence the microscope...

I have a nice pic of the ST Frog (bug, officially).

 

[chookey]

I'm going to have to rethink my purchase. Just because I want it doesn't necessarily mean I should buy it. I have no doubt that it will be a welcome addition to my bench but I'm worried that it would see too much down time to make it's purchase feasible. Many years ago I bought an Amscope SE 400Z. Money was tighter in those days and had I thought about it should have opted for a simul-focal trinocular and let the kids and missus starve for a week
I would sooner leave the general rework well alone now and go into some sort of bga repair or even small time manufacture of boards, hats for a pi or arduino for example. Some type of hobby size process which can still bring in a few £££'s. My life changed dramatically last September and I need to try and change with it.
I'm not profit driven but I still have a large need to find a way of keeping myself occupied with something that has always gave me a great deal of satisfaction. I'm a bit of a slag really, just can't say no to a repair.

 

[Spectre]

I'm going to have to rethink my purchase. Just because I want it doesn't necessarily mean I should buy it. I have no doubt that it will be a welcome addition to my bench but I'm worried that it would see too much down time to make it's purchase feasible. Many years ago I bought an Amscope SE 400Z. Money was tighter in those days and had I thought about it should have opted for a simul-focal trinocular and let the kids and missus starve for a week
I would sooner leave the general rework well alone now and go into some sort of bga repair or even small time manufacture of boards, hats for a pi or arduino for example. Some type of hobby size process which can still bring in a few £££'s. My life changed dramatically last September and I need to try and change with it.
I'm not profit driven but I still have a large need to find a way of keeping myself occupied with something that has always gave me a great deal of satisfaction. I'm a bit of a slag really, just can't say no to a repair.

I was into making small PCBs a few years ago, triple stage etch tank from Mega, Bungard routing and drilling machine, Favorite mechanical throughplate. I think it's far more economical to order PCBs from the Far East (Soon ). Assemble them at home.

I was doing a few jobs with it, including test equipment for the place I now work at. Have to take care with CE and whatnot, it wasn't bad for me as they were doing their own "bringing into service" tests, which is acceptable in some industries.

I think there is more mileage in BGA rework. Just don't get fixated on Blundell stations, I requested a price a few years ago for one of their top machines (no need for manufacturing data, all optical), it was £44k.

Just back to microscopy for a minute. At work, we were a bit concerned about the really good performance we were getting out of cheap op-amps. I took one apart and the die was one 4x the cost of the one marked on the package . The colour is bad as it was captured RAW so there is no colour balance or any processing, using Xenon lamp illumination, if I remember right. I can get up to around 800x real magnification, if an advert says more, it's a lie. It's called hollow magnification - The image is bigger but there is no new information.

One of my hobbies was taking ICs apart . I still have gate-level pictures of the ROM10 below. Some people might know what they are looking at there; the N and P channels with polysilicon between. Top two pictures are the op-amp, bottom two pictures are parts of a ROM10, from a long time ago.

These aren't the best pictures, just some examples that I could dig up quickly.





Here's a picture of when I was half-way through taking the tamper mesh off:

 

[Spectre]

I can't find the M-Plan Apochromatics on Edmund now, they have probably been superseded. To get better resolution, you'd need to go to near-ultraviolet or ultraviolet. Both need special optics and camera, really expensive.

I have all of the objective lenses to 100x. This is the closest I could find. The reason M-Plan Apo is so expensive is the working distance, they were designed so that you could get wafer probes underneath, so the WD of a 100x objective is 6mm. There are a lot of trade-offs for that and the resolution suffers a lot.

Mitutoyo Glass Thickness-Compensated Infinity Corrected Objectives

 

[chookey]

The reason M-Plan Apo is so expensive is the working distance, they were designed so that you could get wafer probes underneath, so the WD of a 100x objective is 6mm. There are a lot of trade-offs for that and the resolution suffers a lot.

Mitutoyo Glass Thickness-Compensated Infinity Corrected Objectives

6mm working distance. The mind boggles. It's all highly interesting stuff and I'm absolutely amazed at the expertise of the people who not only design these devices but those who create the manufacturing processes involved. Posts such as these are what keeps my interest alive and my bank account in jeopardy.
I'm fortunate in that I have enjoyed what I did for a living and had I not done it for a living would likely have pursued it as a hobby. I have watched a large number of informative youtube videos today which I cast onto my 4k tv. The difference between that and my 2 monitor setup was like night and day. Got me looking at replacing my monitors. Had to give myself a bit of a shake, why do I keep doing this to myself,lol.

 

[Spectre]

6mm working distance. The mind boggles. It's all highly interesting stuff and I'm absolutely amazed at the expertise of the people who not only design these devices but those who create the manufacturing processes involved. Posts such as these are what keeps my interest alive and my bank account in jeopardy.
I'm fortunate in that I have enjoyed what I did for a living and had I not done it for a living would likely have pursued it as a hobby. I have watched a large number of informative youtube videos today which I cast onto my 4k tv. The difference between that and my 2 monitor setup was like night and day. Got me looking at replacing my monitors. Had to give myself a bit of a shake, why do I keep doing this to myself,lol.

6mm with a 100x objective is a hell of a distance. The "H" picture above was taken with one, that's why it's a bit blurry. Maybe I didn't have the illumination correct either, it's manual. A bit post-processing in PS would crisp it up a bit. I have some other pictures of tin whiskers, an interesting phenomenon after the abolition of lead solder.

The illumination is fired through the objective on these, as they have other uses. They are called FS-60L and the "L" is for laser. They are trinocular and the third port can accept a laser for repairing TFT panels or manually trimming parts on ICs (laser ablation stuff). I'd like a laser for it but, apparently, it is very bad for the objective lens if you converge the beam inside one, maybe I'm not ready to wreck expensive bits that I'll vever be able to get again.

Don't start reading up on the details of microscopy, it will do your head in .

I started reading up on it a long time ago and it's mind-boggling how lenses have been designed to make all light wavelengths converge to give the best resolution.

 

[chookey]

I was outbid for the thermal camera so bought a new one. The difference was only £40 and I get a guarantee. It arrived this morning and I've put it on charge prior to having a play. Trying to register on the Flir site to extend my guarantee is a joke. Accepted my registration but need to register on their technical site for the guarantee and it won't let me verify my email address, fook all happens

While I try and figure out what to do about it I thought I might as well download their suite of tools. Again, doesn't matter how many times I try, fook all happens. I better be impressed with this camera when it's fully charged else it will be returned to Amazon as quickly as they delivered it

 

[Spectre]

I was outbid for the thermal camera so bought a new one. The difference was only £40 and I get a guarantee. It arrived this morning and I've put it on charge prior to having a play. Trying to register on the Flir site to extend my guarantee is a joke. Accepted my registration but need to register on their technical site for the guarantee and it won't let me verify my email address, fook all happens

While I try and figure out what to do about it I thought I might as well download their suite of tools. Again, doesn't matter how many times I try, fook all happens. I better be impressed with this camera when it's fully charged else it will be returned to Amazon as quickly as they delivered it

I want one at work, where you can select points to measure and leave it logging during PCB level testing. We only have a basic IR thermometer, not really very good for what we need.

 

[chookey]

I also ordered a small signal injector board as I have an upcoming laptop with an intermittent loss of audio coming to me shortly. Wish I had read the description properly, it was a kit
I've put it together but I hate bare board circuits and am looking for some test probes for it with no luck. Was never a problem when Maplin or Tandy's was around. I want to make a couple up with screened cable and then bring the earth shielding out to a crocodile clip, a bit like an oscilloscope probe. I'll terminate them in banana plugs and find a suitable sized project case to finish it off.

EDIT.........Glad I posted this picture, it showed me that pin 1 of the chip wasn't inserted. It was bent over, now fixed

 

[Spectre]

I also ordered a small signal injector board as I have an upcoming laptop with an intermittent loss of audio coming to me shortly. Wish I had read the description properly, it was a kit
I've put it together but I hate bare board circuits and am looking for some test probes for it with no luck. Was never a problem when Maplin or Tandy's was around. I want to make a couple up with screened cable and then bring the earth shielding out to a crocodile clip, a bit like an oscilloscope probe. I'll terminate them in banana plugs and find a suitable sized project case to finish it off.

View attachment 128697

Vellman, Maplin used to sell their kits.

I see you fit axial resistors with the tolerance bands pointing the same way .

I remember in my first job, I had a few before uni, the company owners son complaining to me that it was a waste of time. His assembly skills were really bad; no preforming, big loops on leads, couldn't read colour codes...

The person in charge of quality came over and told that it was actually best practice .

 

[Spectre]

Got some OKW enclosures at work, with battery compartment that would be ideal for that. I would send you one but we have to apply for access at the moment!

Reason: Pinching project cases LOL.