Sometimes old tools are better.

the workbench it's here if you want to see how my dad and I built this thing that video is over on gearing Engineering in this video I wanted to talk about putting together the ideal workspace for electronics and small computer work now most people who use computers these days don't need to solder they don't need a scope they aren't debugging circuits and sadly when something dies it's either tossed in the garbage or put away in a drawer it wasn't always that way and using some of these tools even the most anti-consumer devices could still be repaired but this workbench will will hopefully be the site of some amazing rescues and probably especially if red shirt Jeff gets in here the most frequent place you'll see Magic Smoke That mysterious substance that keeps our devices going this video is sponsored by Squarespace I'll talk about how they're helping me build a new merch website later but right in the middle of ordering this new multimeter I got an email from a company called ISO tip now most people haven't heard of them in fact I think they were spun-off from wall Clippers the company that makes Hair Cutting Clippers way back in the 1970s wall decided to make the first cordless rechargeable soldering iron and wouldn't you know this orange version was the soldering iron I learned to solder on as a kid a little unconventional but that's what you get when you have a dad who's a radio engineer I decided to have him come by and asked if he'd bring this iron over to compare it to a brand new ISO tip 7700 they sent me so ISO tip actually emailed me a week or two ago and just out of the blue said hey I we saw you made a new electronics workbench we want our soldering iron on and it's soldering to all you UK people people that's what we say in America but I thought it was awesome because this was the first soldering iron I learned on I remember doing a lot of little projects with this and when I notic when I realized people don't use wireless soldering irons I was like oh that was so handy though cuz like you just walk up and grab it and you use it this is like Seven Dust years old you can see the dust there quite a bit of dust but because the battery died many years ago and I did not even Ponder getting that recharge we came out butane is another one you can throw in a case this one you really can't throw in a case unless the case includes the knce space for that because it it'll break uh the tip and stuff come off but these are great keep on the bench when you got jobs you used to have a lot more soldering jobs going somewhere and it's easier to take this with you go in with a little solder and do a quick fix on a connector or something that you're um you're working on so that but I got one that's had to be 20 30 years I don't know what I thought was really interesting is if you look at this like take this thing this is this is the model 7700 this was probably from the 9s maybe the 80s like the molding is the same the light is the same it's still incandescent although the style of it is a little different even the charging I think it's just a transformer in there like they haven't changed anything y but I think there are a couple improvements they could make especially having a little charging indicator but uh yep but it's like if if the design works why change it you get multiple tips I'm sure they still sell multiple yeah they have tons of tips the thing I liked too is you set it down and it's not going to burn anything cuz it's off your desk so just a lot of neat little things and the light like I noticed I was I I think I saw big Clive on YouTube had a video on it and he mentioned like most soldering irons don't have lights yeah well they used to a lot of them used to well the soldering irons yeah the the guns and everything had lights but this was unique in that too that well it still is so I have I have a Pinel this is one of the the latest and greatest it's nice because like that one it has a screw on it you're me to take it apart fix it change the tips do whatever and it has hackable firmware which is a little weird to have firmware and a soldering iron uh but it it's powered by USBC or a barrel plug but it doesn't have a light like that like it could put a little little LED there you know so and then also I have a A heo or a hacko fx991 I use this on the Mr Beast Set uh but it has you know the the doublea's but this is a little this one's a little more Awkward to use it's uh it's handy and a pinch and I like that it uses the Double A's cuz you find those anywhere yep but again no light like yeah no light anyway I I I just thought it was cool it is I'm I'm marking this video sponsored because they sent these to me for free to to have on the desk but I wouldn't have I don't normally accept those kind of things but because of the history with this and you had another one I think didn't you this even has your initials on look at that no initials well they are yours as well that's neat to see and the new one has oh yeah this this one has a lith lifeo lithium phosphate whatever but it's you know the same same style and everything it does have a couple little upgrades I think uh the the charging base has an LED on the plug not on the base but it turns red when you're when you're charging it and then green when it's done MH and I think that the Transformer stays going forever so this thing if you leave it plugged in Forever it'll get hot for somebody with lithium ion batteries like I don't like that getting so hot but I guess the battery in here it's not as bad but yeah yeah you take it in you pull it out when it's charged if you want flip it over stays right there soldering over the years has changed for at least for the broadcast Engineers we did a lot of punching we did a lot of pre now we buy a lot of pre-made and we make our uh audio travels on ethernet cables so xlrs are less used digal now yeah it's a a lot of change so but not a lot of change yeah it's true like wish more companies would just take a good product and just keep making it ISO tip could have rubberized the grip to make it look cool they could have put in a non-replaceable LED or they could have made a dumb app for it with a subscription service but they didn't this thing has a few warts but if it's reliable it's supported for literal decades and the company even encourages you to buy a new battery instead of trashing it and buying another one I can get behind that this isn't a sexy soldering iron but I know this thing will last until I'm retired and and I can't say that about most things I buy nowadays it was just kind of crazy that ISO tip reached out right as we finished up the workbench but that's electronics for you I think for most Hardware hackers if you go back to when you started there's probably a tool or some piece of kit that really Drew you in for me it was that soldering iron my dad had a black one too but there was something about a cordless orange soldering iron that really did it for me maybe it was also the leaded solder I'm sure that I breeded in a little too much but between that my dad's old oscilloscope and all his other gear I was hooked but you can see behind me the bench is already starting to fill up I figure now's as good a time as any to walk through things so these things are things that I chose for the workbench so far yeah uh well I didn't choose that I have a story about that but uh but I I chose all these other bits and pieces can you explain the purpose of having these particular tools at a workbench yeah the this group here is huge right you got an oscilloscope to see waveforms right you want to see the stuff uh you got something to produce or generate uh Power uh and this one is great because it has three different sources so it's something to generate power and something to measure the voltages and you can measure current with that too but so you've got the basic tools here for uh a lot of the troubleshooting build uh watching the data flow whatever you want to do you've got these three boxes doing a lot of that probably the next thing up would be this a generator of waveforms so you could actually make square waves and certain frequencies and triangle waves and whatever else you wanted to do to test that'd be the the next piece I would add as a as a broadcast know a lot a lot of different workbenches you see just equipment stacked up high yeah well so like when you see when guys set up a bench like the ham guys who I've been watching a lot more of lately uh when they set up a bench it's like troubleshoot fix maintain and it's a station it's a it's a broadcast station so they have equipment for measuring forward reflected power and impedances and things like that uh so but for your general Electronics things you've got a lot of the stuff covered here and you can probably never have enough little uh tools for holding things while you're working on them or testing soldering those are you people and then your wire here you got your different wire sizes I probably have uh 12 boxes of wire and above mine but it's on a shelf next to it but handy uh depending on what type of wire you're looking to use and then again the workbench is oriented toward fixing things with a lot of power like a transmitter you wouldn't necessarily have an RV power connector but you're going to have some kind of power there to to help you pull separate power so you don't pop your breaker on your bench if you're going to test like transmitters and things like that so I love this too look at that like that air duster you can't get rid of enough dust I still have I still have another can left but uh the cans are a lot less useful once you have a powered they go out so fast they just become empty freeing cold the thing that's interesting is most of the time uh I would take something outside to use this electric duster on it because it's got enough dust to be concerned about it but a lot of times you just get a little bit of stuff out of your way and it's not a big deal but that all goes somewhere right don't want it in the lungs as much as on the floor and vacuum it up but yeah uh it's a it's a deal what what about like safety I know with with soldering you're having fumes and I have some leaded solder up there and things like that what do you do for that cuz right now all I have is this little cheap fan that has a filter on the back of it yeah yeah well and since a lot of Engineers used to smoke I don't think it's ever been that big of a deal I don't know which is worse the old school engineers solder fumes going on a lot of times we couldn't decide where we were soldering if you're underneath of a air Studio that's on the air and you got to resolder some headphone jacks or something you really can't bring that to the bench but uh trying to avoid the breathing of the air is it is a deal so having a fan is great uh we always you know def you know try to have the air go up and the head not above it I'm thinking I'm thinking about putting in they make units that sit on the floor with a tube that comes up you can position wherever you want and then it sucks there so if you did blow this out or to have a bench area where you did draw the air out and you filtered it uh that's like the Nirvana that's the greatest so we've already gotten some great suggestions and the comments on gearing engineering but I'll keep adding to the workbench probably starting with a proper fume extractor I also added this overhead amaran light I wanted a nice soft light for video and the f2x was suggested by Patrick from serve the home it's light enough I can clip it into the ceiling grid and not worry that it'll fall on me but after installing it I realized I still want more light so I'll probably make some Led strips to mount under these shelves I also put an ergotron monitor arm on the side and it'll be handy to have a full PC running over here it'll be helpful for looking up repair guides and probably some radio stuff too another thing that's coming handy is this new mug it's just one of the new things I'm prepping for my new merch store red shirt Jeff The Old Company I used was really going down hill in terms of shirt quality and the merch s's been annoying to customize so I'm redoing everything Squarespace is printing shirts but they've been a great choice for my new merch site it was easy to get started with one of their site templates and I can still customize things down to the CSS when I need to besides the easy site building tools they have flexible payment and shipping Integrations a guided design system called blueprint AI tools and they're just a great solution if you just want to run a website without much hassle it's been a month since I started working on the new store but that's been mostly on the shirt and design side I've only had to spend a couple hours total on the site setup and it's already looking pretty good I'm almost ready to launch the new news store but if you want to get started on your own news store website go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com shirt Jeff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain so we built this workbench over on the gearing engineering Channel and you should go check out that video because we talk a little bit about the structure of it you know things that we like and why this workbench is here and also an explanation for the name tag that's over on the corner there but one thing that we might start doing over on the gearing engineering channel is a little segment where Dad brings out some things that are weird or wild or just old and strange and I'm going to try to guess what it is and you can try guessing what it is too you brought a whole box full I did bring a whole box yeah yeah so so grab something out of there and see if we can yeah grab something here's one let me let me take a look at it and see what I first read it yeah says carrier for Traverse rods I don't know what a Traverse Rod is that means I reused a box that used to be something related to drapes or something so uh this is very odd there's a this is this one of those puzzles where you're supposed to figure out how to get you got to figure out how to open it up and well if you can't you don't get hired as a technical Junior engineer so I did engineering that was my first job out of high school yeah but I didn't do any of this yeah there's a is that like a laser point no uh you can see things that's interesting yeah I can see oh it's like a magnifying glass M yep that's interesting it says 50 oh 50 times yep and then this guy is missing a part so I don't know where that is I haven't fine with it but this guy has a little holder a little stand yeah so these things were all tied together for one purpose it doesn't look like there's any purpose to it but uh there is a purpose I still don't understand maybe not anymore I don't know well I I would uh I would say so if you look at these the one thing you know you need to do is you need to clean your needle on your record player you inspect it with your mirror and then you weigh the weight this is a balance rod how many grams see that you could see the markings here so the little device you balance it on tells you how much how much weight you are applying to the record and this is a microscope inspector for the needle has a little bit of a cut gauge there so you can just dick the needle on there and look at it and do an inspection so vinyl is actually getting very popular these days are these is this a little kit that most most hipsters need to have sitting around have it to check all that stuff out you know when you got guys playing you know 100 records a day though it makes a difference on you know when do you replace a $25 needle you know but I when I started you guys had eight tracks and well not carts cart machines we call them carts but they were like the eight tracks only they were stereo so did you have records when you started out uh when I started there was records there were records and and real real tapes where the main way audio was delivered on the stations and when I was there and the records were uh it it was it was fun you try to speed up the the records a little bit because then you sounded like you had a little more pop noways you over modulate a little bit little tweaks yeah yeah well this you should actually know this guy this is a this was one of our early happy things when uh I see that I do I do remember this actually you this was I think you had the G4 it was either G4 or G5 it has fire wire on it audio out video out and Video in right yeah so video inputs and you did a lot of uh trans coating old VHS tapes a lot of that and a lot of uh video taken from the cameras at the time you know you could take a camera out in the field uh and you could get that super S Video in there not just regular I remember s video was so amazing because it's so clear comp so clear compared to the other yeah you play your uh what is a video game that had the output for that too so yeah so you've got you know the the firewire thing was the big thing you could do whatever you remember what that spec was i e 1394 but what was the speed on the thing 400 megabits 400 megabits faster than ethernet it's uh it's hard to keep up with everything there so yeah this was the device we I I ingested a lot of video uh with this device into our computer world back when some of those probably that probably would work with the G4 up in the front too might you have to take that and try it this is my favorite cables you want to do a cable yeah do a cable thing so I got a bag of cables that in just in case I need them someday like for a son who has really old computers in his Lobby yeah um but these cables uh you can see yeah the different ends these look like scuzzy the db25 and the uh C I forget what the name of that is on the other end but these look like a bunch of scuzzy cables SC Terminator yeah and a Terminator so I this was like right in the heart of when I was doing Computing was scuzzy was like the fast fastest fast way to get data mov on hard the the you know that era of Mac was when I started getting into Computing and so I I did a lot with scuzzy we had a scuzzy scanner we had I think we had a scuzzy printer at one point you can daisy chain and so at the end you wanted to terminate if you do it right you know if you did it right if it wasn't an internal Terminator for scuzzy you had to put one on so yep yeah it was that was in the days of irqs and everything that you put into a computer to have to like set the pins the right way on it imagine how fast you could get data to throw through that fat of a cable now 25 pins if want to see more of that kind of thing check out gearing engineering I will link to the video on building the workbench and we have some other great video stuff coming up too all right oh I need to stop recording oh yeah you should do that

Channel: Jeff Geerling

Views: 125,007

Keywords: workbench, electronics, geerling, engineering, joe, radio, ham, shack, setup, dmm, digital, multimeter, tool, tools, soldering, solder, station, wick, oscilloscope, scope, oscope, waveform, generator, debug, right to repair, fix, audio, video, it, networking, power, supply, tester, iso-tip, 7700, lifepo, upgrade, old, vintage, firewire, scsi, build, mug, esd mat, tabletop, mark, engineer, programmer, operator, amateur

Id: toEvV2QGVnU

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024