Member postings for John Doe 2

Mine is a W61 - mains voltage. The switch is at the opposite end of the heating tube to the tip, and is operated magnetically. The switch housing is transparent and I can see the switch contacts open and close if I remove the tip or heat the tip with a blowtorch.

The problem has to be lack of heat transfer to the tip from the heating element so the tip is not getting hot enough to magnetically trigger the switch. The barrel and tip both seem clean enough. Is there a heat transfer paste I could use? Never seen it with any of the 48V Wellers I used at work though.

Leipzig is also a very nice town/city to visit. Big airport there and an impressive train terminus, Cathedral etc.

As I stated above , the switch is not welded shut - that is the first thing I checked - visually. It opens when I withdraw the tip from the barrel, and when I heat the tip with a blow torch.

There is some other reason, that I cannot fathom, except possibly to do with (lack of ) heat transfer from the barrel to the tip.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 01/10/2022 21:16:35

Ah, very handy that I just noticed this thread:

I too used Weller TCP irons professionally for many years, and found them to be very good.

So, naturally I bought a Weller TCP for myself - a W 61 model. But it has a weird fault. Sometimes it works perfectly, but other times, the heating element jams on. The first I am aware of this is a bakelite smell from the iron holder stand and on inspection I can just make out that the barrel is glowing a very dull red !!

I have had the iron in pieces several times and can see that the internal magnetically operated element switch is not welded shut. The switch operates when I remove the tip from the barrel or heat the tip in situ with a blowtorch.

So why does the iron sometimes not shut off? I bought the iron and Weller tips from RS, and of course it is now out of guarantee, but it must be possible to get this thing working. I note Robert's comments about the tips made of two sections, which are the type I have, (no 7 ones). I have tried a couple of tips.

I wondered if the heat from the element is not getting to the tip enough to trip its magnet? is there a heat transfer cream I could use?

Or any other suggestions welcomed.

I haven't really researched it or done the sums yet, but I can fit 6-8 panels on the shed* roof and will have an inverter and battery system. The compressor will not be a large one, and will only be used on a very occasional basis: A few moments of impact wrenching, air hammering, vacuum brake bleeding or blow-nozzle use etc. Not a huge amount.

Or, I put those 6-8 panels on the main house with the others that I plan to fit there. The shed roof though is in a perfect location, sun-wise - better than the house roof - so it seems a shame to waste that resource. I don't think that adding the remote cells to the main cells electrically would be viable, owing to loses, but I am mostly thinking aloud at the moment.

*actually a well-built brick and tile single garage. 

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 01/10/2022 12:08:10

Pretty much designed the layout of my new double garage/workshop, (designed in my head, while going to sleep every night).

It will have two zones, divided by a plastic curtain: The outer half, next to the outer double door, will be the 'dirty' zone; any sanding, drilling, planing etc will be done in this half, with the curtain closed across, and maybe with the outer door open to allow dust and shavings to "vent" out to the atmosphere. And once in a while, I can blow out all the dust with an airline. I will fit kitchen type units as drawers and cupboards for all my tools and stuff.

The air compressor will be in the garden shed, probably powered by solar cells on the shed roof, and away from the house so no noise nuisance, with a buried pipe and control wires to the garage.

The indoor half of the garage will be the clean zone; where I will have my electronics bench, my 3D printer and other dust-sensitive tools and equipment. That way, dust will be kept away from the sensitive tools and the house, and it will also help keep the heat in the house.

If I need to bring a car in to work on; I can open the curtain to allow the full area of the double garage.

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 27/09/2022 19:23:58

My local library cannot source a copy of the Electronics Handbook by J. Whitaker.

Do any members own or have seen a copy, in which case can they give me summary as to its content and quality?

Well over 2,000 pages......

Thanks.

That looks to be just what I am after, and it includes optical fibre circuits and other things of interest to me. £200 is not cheap, but I reckon I have another 25 years to go, so £8 a year. Seems reasonable. I will see if the local library can source it for me, and if it is what I need in terms of practical instruction as well as the theory; I will buy a copy.

Many thanks for all the replies.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 26/09/2022 14:31:35

Thank you, Michael, for the recommendation for Pepler Optics.

I have always fancied a good quality digital microscope for general use, and now have an idea of a Christmas present for myself !

Not cheap though - I might see if a decent second hand optical binocular microscope would be cheaper, and buy an eyepiece camera for it from Pepler.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 22/09/2022 18:30:30

I've searched the forum and am not sure whether to put this here or in the books forum. Mods, please move this if you want.

Wondering if any can advise a good electronics reference book?

I have the classic Horowitz and Hill manual, but it doesn't cover everything.

I have an electronics background so I don't need the basics, but would like a medium to advanced reference manual I can use for circuit design work, and as a memory jogger.

Yes, I can google stuff but it's nice to have an actual book.

Thanks.

In my many years experience in live television broadcasting and home vehicle repairs, I have found that about 70% of electrical and electronic faults are caused by bad interconnections.

Then about 20% are caused by blown fuses, 9% by bad power supplies and finally only 1% by actual failed electronics.

My car suddenly came to a shuddering halt one day, with the instrument warning lights all lit up. I was literally yards from my home and the engine did restart, sort of, so I was able to limp home.

Then, according to the above, I disconnected all the electrical connectors on and around the engine*, sprayed them with switch cleaner spray, and reconnected and disconnected each one several times, to clean the pins. All was then well, and the car has been fine for years since.

If I was the OP, I would check relevant fuses, and clean connections relating to the ABS, and then remove the instrument cluster and clean the connector on the back, as above*.

There are sources of vehicle wiring diagrams on-line - you can buy just a one day subscription and print off whatever you need.

Sadly, even in this day and age, a female taking a car to a garage can still fall victim to the males in some garages thinking they can rip her off because they assume she won't understand the technicalities and will meekly pay up if they tell her something needs doing.

Secondly, many main dealers, do not have proper engineers working in their garage any more; they have "technicians" but all they do is connect a scan tool and change whatever the scanner says is not working - colloquially known as 'loading and firing the parts cannon'. Usually though, whatever is not working is only due to a bad ground or bad supply, and the unit itself is not faulty. Unplugging the supposedly broken unit and plugging a new one in frequently cleans the bad connections in the plug, which is what clears the fault. However, meanwhile you have paid hundreds of pounds for a new unit, when the original one actually still worked perfectly, if only the interconnections had been cleaned.

*I cannot take any responsibility if you copy what I do, but you could potentially save hundreds of pounds of garage bills.

WD40 make a good switch cleaner spray.

No, no permanent pilot light - the boiler is a Potterton Netaheat, which electronically lights the pilot light every time the boiler comes on. The gas fire's pilot light is also only on if you are actually using the fire, but we will be taking that fire out and replacing it with a wood-burner with a back-boiler.

But the boiler gas valve might have a small leak, or the gas fire valve, or a ring on the gas hob. Or a pipe under the floor to any of these. Just moved into this house, and I don't know, nor have schematics of where the gas pipes run. They are all behind plasterboard walls or in concrete floors. I hope they didn't put bare copper pipe into the concrete - that would cause the pipe to form holes.

I am facing having to rip open plaster board walls to trace the gas pipes, and probably need a natural gas 'sniffer' probe. Is there such a thing I could buy or are they only pro devices costing thousands? Maybe I could rent one.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 06/09/2022 17:31:04

By coincidence, I have also recently started recording daily, our gas and electricity meter readings. Easy to do by standing in front of the meter boxes and putting the readings straight into a spreadsheet on my phone and programming the 'sheet to calculate the daily usage.

This is to see how much energy we use daily and if we can economise any further.

Anyway, we spent the last two days away so I turned the gas boiler timer/programmer to off. We left about five table lights on timers.

I have just checked the meter readings today, and both meters show a significant amount of energy consumed, even though we were not in the house at all. The meters show about 0.3 m3 of gas was consumed per day, and about 2.5kWh of electricity per day.

At the moment, we normally use about 0.70 m3 of gas per day, but no gas device was used while we were away, so something is clearly wrong - we must have a gas leak downstream of the gas meter, (but no smell of gas). Only four candidates; the boiler, the gas fire, the hob - or an actual pipe leak somewhere.

The electricity usage also seems high, but might be about right - 5 lights at about 40W each, on and off for 12 hours overnight, plus the fridge/freezer, the TV, recorder and computer on standby, the Wi-Fi hub and phone, and the house alarm. Time to get more LED bulbs and don't leave things on standby.

Makes you think though.....I am glad I started recording the meter readings - especially the gas - otherwise I would have just assumed my gas bill was right, even though I obviously have a sizeable leak, which I need to locate. Could be a leaky gas valve.

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 06/09/2022 13:40:29

I don't have any knowledge of the driver board in question, but if it is now popping a 5A fuse when a 2A used to be OK, then obviously something is drawing more current.

My immediate thought is electrolytic capacitors on the driver board. These can 'dry out' over time, and could easily cause excess current to be drawn. I would look at checking and replacing any duff electrolytics - if you are into that level of repair. If not, a new board would be much easier and possibly cheaper in the long run - assuming the motor is not partially shorted.

I would also check the current draw with the board powered up but the motor at rest to see if that seems sensible.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 27/08/2022 10:25:22

Just to wrap this up, I have now fitted our bedroom ceiling fan - so you have me to blame for the cooler weather, sorry !

As usual, the fan needed to be fixed between two joists, hence the wooden plate, but anyway, I prefer to over-engineer things, and the fitting instructions do say the fixing should be able to support 4x the fan's static weight, so I like to spread the load over two joists.

PS, yes I will be changing those wall lights, but we have only just moved in.

On the latter: yes they should, but some office staff are shockingly casual about GDPR. Having told someone in an email that I would telephone to give my bank details rather than email them - because email is not secure - they emailed back with my bank details saying they had found these on file; were they the correct ones? Words failed me......

I seem to get more spam and junk email after I have given out my genuine details on an internet site - even so-called https, i.e. supposedly secure sites. Difficult to know which sites are leaking the info.

......because big organisations are now staffed by people who have had smart-phones and internet access since they were 9 years old.

Therefore they cannot conceive of anybody not having a smart-phone, or anybody wanting to physically go all that way to a ticket office and talk to a human being, when they can do it all at the touch of a button from home.

People like us who remember (and prefer), the old ways have mostly retired.

PS, unless it is vital to me that someone has my number, I just make one up. Giving out your mobile number invites a lot of spam and nuisance texts, and con artists.

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 24/08/2022 09:24:56

Ofcom are becoming a lot more pro-active these days.

My other day-job involves using radio frequencies for television outside broadcasts, and this year I have twice met Ofcom with spectrum analysers patrolling sites and checking equipment. They are very nice folk - as long as you are licensed - and have been very helpful to me in finding interference from other users. I don't think Ofcom are hopeless, but they cannot monitor the whole UK all the time. A phone call might bring them looking.

The OP should apply for a licence, or return the equipment and demand a refund, since otherwise, the gear is seemingly illegal to be operated in the UK?

If you start interfering with my telly at home, (group A), I will have something to say about it !

Flybe have never operated Airbus aircraft - they fly Bombardier and Embraer aircraft. They used to operate the BAe146 too; those simulators are at Woodford, Manchester.

The Airbus Sim in my photo would have been one at Gatwick. They are extremely realistic - they are the actual real thing, just cut-off behind the cockpit door and put on full motion jacks. The way they recreate some of the forces is very clever. On acceleration for take-off, the Sim pushes forward, but soon runs out of travel. So it then tilts the whole simulator up but keeps the visuals inside level. Inside the Sim, all we can detect and feel is a constant level acceleration pushing us into our seats, but it is actually coming from gravity, not real linear acceleration. 

We have to go in one for 4 hours a day for 2 days every 6 months to prove we can fly all the profiles, and all the emergencies. These include loss of an engine at the point we are "rotating" to lift off the runway, (commercial twin engined aircraft are certificated to be able to perfectly safely continue the take-off on the remaining engine, but you have to get the aircraft control exactly right). Other challenges are loss of hydraulic power, or loss of all main electrical generators, or rapid decompression at 35,000', or the 'death' of the other pilot !! All good fun.

[quote]........ but he found himself entering a blind bend at 90mph on the wrong side of the road..............[quote] Highly dangerous and illegal.

[quote]..........When stuck behind a slow-mo, I remind myself that the driver may be compensating for his poor eyesight, slow reactions, bald tyres, empty fuel tank, iffy brakes or a flashing engine warning light. Or maybe he's concentrating on being lost, or listening to upsetting noises coming from the suspension or his wife... Even brilliant drivers drive badly when distracted! [quote]

Agreed, and all part of "situational awareness" - looking and thinking well ahead, and allowing for external, (and internal), factors as you describe, including being aware if another driver is clearly not concentrating on the road, or indeed if I myself am not and need a break.

One classic example of drivers not concentrating or thinking ahead  is when I stop alongside a row of parked cars to reverse park into a space. As I wait, stopped, just ahead of a space on the left, with my brake lights on, my reversing lights on, and my left indicator on, some idiot invariably comes up and stops right behind me. With my car's position on the road and the lights I am showing to the rear, what do they think I am attempting to do? Oh yes, he wants to reverse park into that space !! So perhaps they should stop well back, allowing me the room to do so, instead of stopping right behind me and blocking me completely, so I have to give up and drive on.

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Edited By John Doe 2 on 19/08/2022 08:37:45

You win today's prize, for exactly the reason you state.

@IanT, I suspect that the guy suddenly stopping in front of you was getting really annoyed that no matter what he did, you were continually following him at a fixed distance. Or were too close to him. What he did was wrong and dangerous, but it is very annoying when someone behind follows you at the same speed and same distance for miles and miles - speeding up when you speed up, slowing down when you slow down. This is something to be aware of when using fixed-distance cruise controls.

Edited By John Doe 2 on 18/08/2022 10:48:08