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Re: Shipping Scopes

 

Used carpet padding (the kind made from individual bits of dense foam) is very protective, soft enough to form around the packed contents, and FREE. It is a bit heavy, though, but that's somewhat of a secondary concern.

Thanks,
Barry - N4BUQ

----- Original Message -----
From: "stevenhorii" <sonodocsch@...>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 12:43:55 PM
Subject: Re: [TekScopes] Shipping Scopes

If I can, I pack items myself and take them to UPS or FedEx for shipping.
Double-wall boxes are available at Home Depot and Lowes. They are usually
in the ¡°moving supplies¡± aisle.

If you are shipping a scope with plug-ins, remove the plug-ins and pack
them in a separate box. It may be more expensive, but my understanding is
that Tek always recommended shipping scopes with the plug-ins removed.
Besides less stress on the backplane connectors, packing the plug-ins
separately means you can pack them to better protect the knobs.

I probably overdo packing and it costs more both for the packing materials
and higher shipping weight but if you want an item to get to its
destination in good shape, pack well. UPS used to say to pack for a
four-foot drop onto concrete (a sign in the UPS store I used to use when I
was in Los Angeles and bought a lot of surplus electronic equipment).
Nothing I packed and sent home was ever damaged in shipping.

I bubble wrap the scope with at least a double layer over the front and
back. I buy the inexpensive white styrofoam insulation at the home
improvement stores. I have found that using a serrated knife works well (I
bought an inexpensive bread knife for this) to cut the foam to fit the box.
I will usually put an extra couple of layers of bubble under the bottom of
the scope. I always attach a label with the address of the recipient on it
to the wrapped scope or other item. If there are voids between the wrapped
scope and the foam lining, I fill that with more bubble. I hate using
styrofoam peanuts to fill voids, but there¡¯s a trick I use so the recipient
does not spend a mess of time getting the peanuts out of the equipment or
off the floor. I put the styro peanuts into plastic bags (I use recyclable
grocery bags for this) and tie the bags off so the peanuts stay in them.
Sometimes, I put an empty bag in the voids if they are irregular in shape
and then pack the peanuts into them and tie them off. Loose peanuts also
¡°migrate¡± in the box and putting them in bags prevents this.

A couple of other tricks. Stretch wrap - I use that to hold the bubble
around the scope rather than taping it. It allows the bubble to be re-used
rather than thrown out. I have also used painter¡¯s tape (¡°blue tape¡±) for
this as it is easily removable so also allows the bubble to be reused.

I tape the box shut with packing tape including the edges of the flaps
(keeps them from getting caught on the various sorting machines). I put the
label on the ¡°top¡± side as that tends to stay right side up. Another trick
- write on the BOTTOM of the box - ¡°This side DOWN¡±. The reason? If you
write ¡°This side UP¡± on the top and the box is inverted, the shipper will
not see that. If it is bottom up, then the message that it is inverted is
clear.

For really heavy items (not heavy enough for freight) I staple the carton.
Years ago, I bought a carton stapler and a box of staples. I still am using
that first box of staples, but I still have it - only about a quarter used.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 10:43 greenboxmaven via groups.io <ka2ivy=
[email protected]> wrote:

Fedex and UPS pack things fairly well, I have not had any damage. It

can be pricey, but is usually less then traveling to pick something up.

Some people offering equipment demand that you pick it up from them. I

have accounts with both Fedex and UPS, that allows me to take care of

everything from my end and convince reluctant sellers to take items to

the stores. I ask everyone who demands pickup only to reconsider and be

willing to take the item to a shipper who will take care of the packing

and shipping.



Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY





On 9/23/20 10:31 AM, Eric wrote:

Ups , FedEx. At least in the US. Use heavy card board and at minimum 2
inches of loose padding all round for shock. I have gotten them double
boxes before and a 576 even in a wooden crate the trick is limiting
movement in the box I double boxed a high end computer it made it safely
to

California from the east side. But it was not cheap to ship. I have also
been successful crating things and shipping them freight. Plywood and
padding is wonder for protecting the device.
On Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 10:26 AM Adam Beasley <abeasley@...>
wrote:

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes? The only boxes I have
available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't
trust

shipping something heavy and expensive in them.
Thanks,
Adam
Re: Shipping Scopes

 

If I can, I pack items myself and take them to UPS or FedEx for shipping.
Double-wall boxes are available at Home Depot and Lowes. They are usually
in the ¡°moving supplies¡± aisle.

If you are shipping a scope with plug-ins, remove the plug-ins and pack
them in a separate box. It may be more expensive, but my understanding is
that Tek always recommended shipping scopes with the plug-ins removed.
Besides less stress on the backplane connectors, packing the plug-ins
separately means you can pack them to better protect the knobs.

I probably overdo packing and it costs more both for the packing materials
and higher shipping weight but if you want an item to get to its
destination in good shape, pack well. UPS used to say to pack for a
four-foot drop onto concrete (a sign in the UPS store I used to use when I
was in Los Angeles and bought a lot of surplus electronic equipment).
Nothing I packed and sent home was ever damaged in shipping.

I bubble wrap the scope with at least a double layer over the front and
back. I buy the inexpensive white styrofoam insulation at the home
improvement stores. I have found that using a serrated knife works well (I
bought an inexpensive bread knife for this) to cut the foam to fit the box.
I will usually put an extra couple of layers of bubble under the bottom of
the scope. I always attach a label with the address of the recipient on it
to the wrapped scope or other item. If there are voids between the wrapped
scope and the foam lining, I fill that with more bubble. I hate using
styrofoam peanuts to fill voids, but there¡¯s a trick I use so the recipient
does not spend a mess of time getting the peanuts out of the equipment or
off the floor. I put the styro peanuts into plastic bags (I use recyclable
grocery bags for this) and tie the bags off so the peanuts stay in them.
Sometimes, I put an empty bag in the voids if they are irregular in shape
and then pack the peanuts into them and tie them off. Loose peanuts also
¡°migrate¡± in the box and putting them in bags prevents this.

A couple of other tricks. Stretch wrap - I use that to hold the bubble
around the scope rather than taping it. It allows the bubble to be re-used
rather than thrown out. I have also used painter¡¯s tape (¡°blue tape¡±) for
this as it is easily removable so also allows the bubble to be reused.

I tape the box shut with packing tape including the edges of the flaps
(keeps them from getting caught on the various sorting machines). I put the
label on the ¡°top¡± side as that tends to stay right side up. Another trick
- write on the BOTTOM of the box - ¡°This side DOWN¡±. The reason? If you
write ¡°This side UP¡± on the top and the box is inverted, the shipper will
not see that. If it is bottom up, then the message that it is inverted is
clear.

For really heavy items (not heavy enough for freight) I staple the carton.
Years ago, I bought a carton stapler and a box of staples. I still am using
that first box of staples, but I still have it - only about a quarter used.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 10:43 greenboxmaven via groups.io <ka2ivy=
[email protected]> wrote:

Fedex and UPS pack things fairly well, I have not had any damage. It

can be pricey, but is usually less then traveling to pick something up.

Some people offering equipment demand that you pick it up from them. I

have accounts with both Fedex and UPS, that allows me to take care of

everything from my end and convince reluctant sellers to take items to

the stores. I ask everyone who demands pickup only to reconsider and be

willing to take the item to a shipper who will take care of the packing

and shipping.



Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY





On 9/23/20 10:31 AM, Eric wrote:

Ups , FedEx. At least in the US. Use heavy card board and at minimum 2
inches of loose padding all round for shock. I have gotten them double
boxes before and a 576 even in a wooden crate the trick is limiting
movement in the box I double boxed a high end computer it made it safely
to

California from the east side. But it was not cheap to ship. I have also
been successful crating things and shipping them freight. Plywood and
padding is wonder for protecting the device.
On Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 10:26 AM Adam Beasley <abeasley@...>
wrote:

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes? The only boxes I have
available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't
trust

shipping something heavy and expensive in them.
Thanks,
Adam
Re: Shipping Scopes

 

My favorite source of boxes for shipping large/heavy items are bike shops.? Of course, they need to be resized, but with foam planking and double boxes I never had any damage shipping scopes.
-Dave

On Wednesday, September 23, 2020, 10:12:49 AM PDT, Roy Morgan <k1lky68@...> wrote:

Do look into shipping by bus.

-bus station to bus station
-sending and receiving parties go to the bus stations
- not very expensive
-May not be very fast
-packages are handled by people not massive factories of heartless conveyer belts.

I sent two MITE teletypes in one box successfully. (Maybe 65 pounds)

Find heavy duty cartons or "dish packs" from U-Haul, cut down to size if needed.

Roy Morgan
K1LKY Western Mass

On Sep 23, 2020, at 10:31 AM, Eric <ericsp@...> wrote:

?Ups , FedEx. At least in the US. Use heavy card board and at minimum 2
inches of loose padding all round for shock. I have gotten them double
boxes before and a 576 even in a wooden crate the trick is limiting
movement in the box I double boxed a high end computer it made it safely to
California from the east side. But it was not cheap to ship. I have also
been successful crating things and shipping them freight. Plywood and
padding is wonder for protecting the device.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 10:26 AM Adam Beasley <abeasley@...> wrote:

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes?? The only boxes I have
available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't trust
shipping something heavy and expensive in them.

Thanks,
Adam
Re: Shipping Scopes

Roy Morgan
 

Do look into shipping by bus.

-bus station to bus station
-sending and receiving parties go to the bus stations
- not very expensive
-May not be very fast
-packages are handled by people not massive factories of heartless conveyer belts.

I sent two MITE teletypes in one box successfully. (Maybe 65 pounds)

Find heavy duty cartons or "dish packs" from U-Haul, cut down to size if needed.

Roy Morgan
K1LKY Western Mass

On Sep 23, 2020, at 10:31 AM, Eric <ericsp@...> wrote:

?Ups , FedEx. At least in the US. Use heavy card board and at minimum 2
inches of loose padding all round for shock. I have gotten them double
boxes before and a 576 even in a wooden crate the trick is limiting
movement in the box I double boxed a high end computer it made it safely to
California from the east side. But it was not cheap to ship. I have also
been successful crating things and shipping them freight. Plywood and
padding is wonder for protecting the device.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 10:26 AM Adam Beasley <abeasley@...> wrote:

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes? The only boxes I have
available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't trust
shipping something heavy and expensive in them.

Thanks,
Adam
Re: Shipping Scopes

 

Here's a page on a fabulous, late 570 I sold into Japan in 2000:



and here's a page detailing the crate I made to get there in one piece:



And, just for fun, a page of pix of the internals:



Bill @ PEARL, Inc.

Fedex and UPS pack things fairly well, I have not had any damage.
It can be pricey, but is usually less then traveling to pick something up.
Some people offering equipment demand that you pick it up from them. I
have accounts with both Fedex and UPS, that allows me to take care of
everything from my end and convince reluctant sellers to take items to
the stores. I ask everyone who demands pickup only to reconsider and be
willing to take the item to a shipper who will take care of the packing
and shipping.
Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY
Re: Free TWD 120

 

"Apparently even Tektronics was not above a well executed kludge."

Please stop this. Bad enough in ebay listings, but here?
Re: Looking for calculator keyboard for 7854

 

I have no idea how they lost it, but apparently it's not unusual for the GSP to lose packages; apparently it arrived in the UK and the courier is still waiting for it (a month since it got to the UK). Ity will probably turn up in a lost items auction and end up back on ebay or being tossed in the rubbish bin
Re: Free TWD 120

 

Yes, isn't it.

Apparently even Tektronics was not above a well executed kludge.

Thomas Garson
Aural Technology, Ashland, OR
By my calculation, the dynamic range of the universe is roughly 679dB,
which is approximately 225 bits, collected at a rate 1.714287514x10^23 sps.

On 9/22/20 10:52 PM, ykochcal wrote:
Interesting dead bug looking patch in the last picture
John
Re: Shipping Scopes

 

Fedex and UPS pack things fairly well, I have not had any damage. It can be pricey, but is usually less then traveling to pick something up. Some people offering equipment demand that you pick it up from them. I have accounts with both Fedex and UPS, that allows me to take care of everything from my end and convince reluctant sellers to take items to the stores. I ask everyone who demands pickup only to reconsider and be willing to take the item to a shipper who will take care of the packing and shipping.

Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY

On 9/23/20 10:31 AM, Eric wrote:
Ups , FedEx. At least in the US. Use heavy card board and at minimum 2
inches of loose padding all round for shock. I have gotten them double
boxes before and a 576 even in a wooden crate the trick is limiting
movement in the box I double boxed a high end computer it made it safely to
California from the east side. But it was not cheap to ship. I have also
been successful crating things and shipping them freight. Plywood and
padding is wonder for protecting the device.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 10:26 AM Adam Beasley <abeasley@...> wrote:

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes? The only boxes I have
available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't trust
shipping something heavy and expensive in them.

Thanks,
Adam
Re: Shipping Scopes

 

Ups , FedEx. At least in the US. Use heavy card board and at minimum 2
inches of loose padding all round for shock. I have gotten them double
boxes before and a 576 even in a wooden crate the trick is limiting
movement in the box I double boxed a high end computer it made it safely to
California from the east side. But it was not cheap to ship. I have also
been successful crating things and shipping them freight. Plywood and
padding is wonder for protecting the device.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 10:26 AM Adam Beasley <abeasley@...> wrote:

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes? The only boxes I have
available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't trust
shipping something heavy and expensive in them.

Thanks,
Adam
Re: Shipping Scopes

 

Depending on how many boxes you need check out Uline.? They have double wall boxes of all sizes.? Staples have some boxes that are better than the Amazon boxes.??
73,
Bill, WA2DVUCape May, NJ

On Wednesday, September 23, 2020, 10:26:12 AM EDT, Adam Beasley <abeasley@...> wrote:

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes?? The only boxes I have available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't trust shipping something heavy and expensive in them.

Thanks,
Adam
Shipping Scopes

 

Is there a good service to use to ship scopes? The only boxes I have available are from Amazon and they are not very sturdy so I wouldn't trust shipping something heavy and expensive in them.

Thanks,
Adam
Re: Is my Tek 468 beyond repair?

 

You're right - my fingers were typing faster than my brain.

SCM
Re: Is my Tek 468 beyond repair?

 

Replacement 5V crystal arrived today. Extremely fast dispatch but its output is only 1.2Vpp and nowhere near the expected TTL level!

I modeled satbegginers idea in LTSpice but couldn't get it to work properly. The output was barely above zero. Scm's idea works well enough though provided NPN collector goes to Vcc and PNP collector goes to ground! I used 2N2222 for the NPN (transition frequency=250MHz) and 2N2907 for the PNP (transition frequency=200MHz).
Re: 7623A Storage problem

 

Colin,

I had the afterthought about low voltages since the regulation of the power transistor Q1195 relies on +5V, +15V and +130V being OK. The components I mentioned are all on the low voltage side of the transformer T1199 and can be checked with the power off. Q1195 is attached by a plug and socket so it can effectively be tested out of circuit, Q1190 can be checked as a pair of diodes for open circuit / short circuit. The two capacitors are likely to be short circuit if they have failed and L1198 will be open circuit if the fuse didn't do its job in time.

At least you don't have to wait 30 minutes for the high voltage to leak away!

Regards,

Roger
Re: Tek 7854 intermittent issues

 

On 23. Sep 2020, at 14:57, Chuck Harris <cfharris@...> wrote:
....
My favorite is the bootstrap capacitor, which is
invariably some cheap piece of Chinese garbage
capacitor in a sea of Nichicon's, or other good
quality capacitors.
Chuck,

thats how I would engineer if I wanted planned obsolescence... a nice single point of failure.

cheers
Martin
Re: Tek 7854 intermittent issues

Chuck Harris
 

Honestly, that is what I find in about 80% of the
repairs I do. A single poorly sourced capacitor
wrecked all orderly operation.

My favorite is the bootstrap capacitor, which is
invariably some cheap piece of Chinese garbage
capacitor in a sea of Nichicon's, or other good
quality capacitors.

-Chuck Harris

David C. Partridge wrote:

The ripple on the -5V looked really quite high ...

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Corvid
Sent: 23 September 2020 09:29
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [TekScopes] Tek 7854 intermittent issues

Not very good at finding things on schematics but I'm fairly sure that the funky looking capacitor is A27C321 I'll have to look through my stuff and see if I have a spare of a decent value on hand. Also if I'm reading things correctly it has to do with the +5 volt rail, but it seems strange that all these issues would be caused by a single sad cap that's kind of out of the way. So I'll keep looking for what is causing these problems in the meantime before I find a replacement and see if that changes anything at all.
Re: Tek 7854 intermittent issues

 

The ripple on the -5V looked really quite high ...

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Corvid
Sent: 23 September 2020 09:29
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [TekScopes] Tek 7854 intermittent issues

Not very good at finding things on schematics but I'm fairly sure that the funky looking capacitor is A27C321 I'll have to look through my stuff and see if I have a spare of a decent value on hand. Also if I'm reading things correctly it has to do with the +5 volt rail, but it seems strange that all these issues would be caused by a single sad cap that's kind of out of the way. So I'll keep looking for what is causing these problems in the meantime before I find a replacement and see if that changes anything at all.
Re: 7623A Storage problem

 

Hi Roger,

Thanks for all the ideas. I am a bit careful with voltages over 1 KV, but in the past, when I was still at school, I caught a belt at 2 KV on a homebrew scope that I was trying to build. This was from a mains-transformer supply with a voltage doubler and so was low-impedance and capable of quite a whack. It came about from a leaky capacitor which was supposed to be keeping the X-modulation input safe. More fool me!

With regard to the 7623A, I think I mentioned that I had checked all of the voltages from the low-voltage DC supply and found that they were all in spec. I might also have mentioned that I could see the sweep output on the BNC at the back of the scope, so a good few voltages are obviously ok.

I suppose I should gird my loins and try to gain safe access to the high-voltage board and that heat-sunk transistor Q1195.

Colin.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Roger Evans via groups.io
Sent: 23 September 2020 11:13
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [TekScopes] 7623A Storage problem

Apologies - I skipped the very important 'check all the low voltage DC supplies', there are so many inter-dependencies in these scopes.

Roger
Re: 7623A Storage problem

 

Apologies - I skipped the very important 'check all the low voltage DC supplies', there are so many inter-dependencies in these scopes.

Roger
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