Nice setup! In addition to a decent scope I like having a USB logic analyzer. There are lots of cheap ones but Saleae (no affiliation) makes really nice ones.
If you have to make the choice between getting a Saleae logic analyzer and a similarly priced oscilloscope, I think the logic analyzer fits more people's use case than the oscilloscope, because digital electronics and signals are more approachable to hobbyists and novices. If you're primarily concerned with decoding digital communications signals, and inspecting their timing, a logic analyzer is the tool for this job.
Nice, wasn't aware of these. We have a lot of NI boards and Picoscopes for analog and mixed signal but this looks like a good choice. We've used their FPGA boards in the past.
Mean Well has some constant current dimmable 24v power supplies with zero flicker. You'd need 2 if you want each strip to be independently controllable. They also can take a PWM signal if you're so inclined, but I bought them because I prefer flicker-free dimming.
e.g.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/709-HLG40H-24B
Mean Well’s power supplies are by far the best I’ve used. Apart from working really well, they also seem to be constructed better than others I’ve used.
My 3d printer, grow lights, hydroponic automation hardware, and a little CNC project are all run on Mean Well power supplies now.
You are unlikely to get amazing dimming performance using constant current with a 24V strip intended for constant voltage operation.
For a bench application like this, get a constant current strip from Bridgelux. They’re cheap and excellent. Digi-key sells them. The “thrive” series is a bit less efficient but has a very nice spectrum. The tiny drivers from Cuvee Systems work well, start quickly, and dim well, but any ordinary LED driver can drive them. Or the bench power supply :)
For 24V tape, here are a few decent choices for drivers:
The Meanwell PWM series. The frequency is below IEEE 1789 recommendations but is okay.
eldoLED LinearDRIVE. The best, but kind of expensive and annoying to use. Program it for a log curve. Here, for example:
Yeah, with a CV strip the Mean Wells with CC dimming have an abrupt shutoff at low brightness - maybe 5% (I haven't measured it), and a brief flash upon increasing brightness just above that threshold. Otherwise they work reasonably well for my use case.
I would also expect some degree of uneven output at lower currents, especially as it ages. But maybe LEDs are more consistently manufactured these days.
You may also experience worse failure modes with the fancier strips that have current limiting ICs instead of resistors.
(Pixel strips can be quite good, too. They seem to mostly have very high PWM frequencies. I assume this is because the electrical behavior is better that way rather than due to any particular care for the pleasantness of using them.)
24 inches (60 cm) is not deep enough, IMO. It's incredibly irritating that IKEA stopped selling reasonably priced 75+ cm deep bench tops (except for in a few markets, like Germany, maybe IKEA thinks they still use CRTs there?).
Also: I see that your photos include a proper solder fume extractor, but the BOM doesn't. I think it makes sense to include one.
I did some research a few months ago for a suitable model available in the EU. My research ended up with this one: Weller ZERO SMOG EL KIT 1. About 700 EUR + VAT. (Didn't pull the trigger yet - curious about thoughts on this one.)
That series has a corner piece which is very deep. I got rid of it in all an international move, but I made a workbench with two of those desks one wall, a corner piece and then one more desk on the adjacent wall. It was nice to have enough space for keeping multiple projects out and felt deep enough in the corner for a PC and monitor. I like that it's very configurable too, you can put legs instead of storage units where you want more legroom.
What works surprisingly well are ordinary folding tables from Staples/OfficeMax, bolted together with brackets for stability. You can create a workbench of any desired shape, size, and depth that way. Once you keep them from swaying side-to-side by fastening them together, the effective load capacity goes way up. Best of all you don't have to feel bad about drilling into them.
Trouble is, I don't think they sell anything but the plastic ones now. Working with anything more ESD-sensitive than 6L6s is a bad idea with those.
I have about 40 linear feet of bench space in my garage. Its cheaper to make durable benches out of 4'x8' sheets of 3/4" plywood with another 3/4" sheet of mdf underneath. I cut them to 3'x8' sheets and use the extra 1' as a shelf. You need the 3' bench space for equipment.
Ikea used to make things out of real wood but they haven't in years. Anything other than actual plywood will sag.
I cut 48x96 sheets into 48x32 benchtops, I find that ideal. Deep enough to hold a lot but shallow enough to still reach the shelves.
Use Gorilla glue to laminate a piece of thin (1/4" or 3/8") ply to a piece of rigid pink foam board, with another piece of thin ply on the bottom. This foam-core sandwich is stiff but lightweight, acoustically dead, and very cheap. You can use a ton of random objects or just a vacuum-bag to apply the lamination pressure. Stick some one-by on the edge and radius it with a router, and you're done.
I find "SMD Sample Books" to be a more effective storage/retrieval system for SMD passives than the lidded parts enclosures. I've got some of the latter, but stopped using them for passives (and repurposed them for small 3-6 pin commonly used parts).
But I have to admit that that setup is far cleaner and more organized overall than my disaster of a workbench...
$625?! I'm not saying it's not worth that, for the ... 510 values, 100 of each, but who's this advice for?
To a newcomer, just get some common values, and perhaps not even 100 of them. Then you find out which ones you use most, or a slightly less common value you're missing but use/want, and restock those.
To anyone else, you know what you do, what you use, get that - I'm not sure there's any point in generic advice.
For prototype/repair/rework parts, we use cheap folders with business card or CD/DVD inserts at work - Cheap and effective!
The labels reflect the location of the item in the folder (Folder x Page y) and also the shelf in Storage (Rack-Bay-Shelf-Place), if it's a part we use also in production.
Sorry about the delay, HN doesn't seem to notify me about comment replies.
I wrote a simple PHP script that generates the labels. It just pulls a bunch of data from our parts database and positions the text/graphical elements on a PDF page using fpdf. The Datamatrix/barcode is generated using Zint.
Once the PDF file is generated, the script passes it to /usr/bin/lp for instant printing to a Dymo LabelWriter, or sent with an attachment disposition for downloading and printing locally.
Hope this helps, please let me know if I may be of further assistance
This is great. My own setup would benefit a lot from some of these ideas. Glad to see the omnifixo in there! It’s one of my favourite things I keep on hand.
I’ve never found the need to keep heaps of components on hand, but I guess I’m not an electrical engineer or anything remotely like it. I just fix stuff and make junk when I’m inspired. What kind of situation would justify having so much stuff on hand? Maybe if you actually design and prototype PCBs and know which components you’ll typically need?
Yes, if you design and prototype PCBs you find pretty quickly that you don't need that many standard components. It's nice then to think about what you need again and again, and then organize it somehow. You can also just collect it over time, but then you end up with large digikey bags filled with smaller digikey bags of components, and it becomes easier to just order everything you need each time instead of sorting through it all.
Me too! I have never used airtable before but have heard of it. I needed an inventory system but I wasn't satisfied with the options I found so I created my own. Right now it is rudimentary but it can import BoM, export to CSV, "build" BoM's (auto-deduct from inventory), octopart API integration for grabbing component info/specs, and all of this compiled to single binary for lightweight selfhosting.
I don't have any experience with Airtable, but I do have experience with Retable. If you're looking for an inventory management system, Retable offers customizable templates for various types of inventory management, including product inventory, asset management, and more. Let me know what your specific needs are, and I can help you find the best solution with Retable.
This is just a fantastic page, why aren't more on the internet like this, with specific parts lists and sources? Very similar to the stations we had when I was doing computer repair a decade ago (no, I will not fix your computer.™) and out of everything on there, be sure to get a good ESD mat, or else you'll never stop chasing random glitches.
I just want to add that the best way to get over starting friction is to have everything ready to go like this. IMHO it's much easier to take care of the low-hanging fruit of arranging and cleaning, than it is to have to do that and THEN work. I struggle with organization though, so I treat that as an active exercise and devote 15 minutes at a time to the chore, rewarding myself with a cup of coffee or whatever afterwards.
> why aren't more on the internet like this, with specific parts lists and sources?
There are forums where people post pictures of their benches, but it's a lot of work to document everything and you're going to use whichever distributor has sufficiently similar items in stock at your price point and can ship to your country.
FWIW, I bet the guy has an ESD mat and it was just too ugly to show.
The only other thing I would add is boxes or large bins. Not for tools or components, but for project work, so you can put it away and work on something else when you need to.
FWIW, Jim Williams was an electronics designer at Linear Technologies (LT, now part of Analog Devices). He had incredible productivity and wrote famously epic application notes.
He was also known for using bare, un-eteched copper PCB and just soldering components to the PCB and connecting their other leads with wire through the air. You can see this on his bench!
Thank you, my nature is to have everything out like him because I think I might have object permanence issues and other ADHD symptoms like time blindness. I feel like I know exactly where everything is that I've ever handled, but once it's organized, I almost lose track of it like a goto.
Discipline is such a struggle for me that I got rid of all of the furniture in my home office and put up a couple of Ikea Billy bookcases with long shelves that wrap around my desk in an upside-down U so that I can see everything on one wall.
Kind of like these, but with a full-size desk and $20 shelves spanning the middle, in birch:
My scopecart was off to the side like that most of the time except when it rolled over to a chemical instrument in the main lab which needed repair or calibration.
Most people who saw my lab when I was in private practice would not have noticed any difference from this museum piece.
I maintained page like this, only to have it penalized by Google when they started cracking down on a particular type of SEO spam.
But another problem is that such pages are just really hard to maintain. In a year or two, half of the items you're liking to are going to be out of production. This is especially true for stuff like no-name test equipment, low-cost breadboards, etc. There's just no stable brand or URL to use.
I definitely agree. As someone who is very tinker-minded, I've had various "workbench" setups on my desk. These range from watch repair, to gunsmithing, to electronics repair, to woodworking.
I'd LOVE if all of those hobbies had a concise, illustrated guide to not only the tools I should get, but *how to organize them*. Organizing is a strength of mine on a computer, where every file fits in every folder and there's no limits of size or shape. But tell me to organize my office, and I'll end up with a perfect system that goes entirely out of whack as soon as one item is added or removed.
Hakko FX-888D is great and appropriate with the other stuff mentioned (although I prefer the older version with an analogue knob for temperature control), but it's $115 and for most new hobbyists a $25 pinecil or a $25 knockoff Hakko T12 is perfectly adequate and miles ahead of anything you'd find in a home depot for the same price.
The TS100 and TS80 are also good cheap alternatives!
One drawback of the Pinecil is that it is solely the iron. You still need to add a power supply, heat-resistant cable, a stand, and a sponge. Not a huge deal, but it is a bit more than $25 to actually start soldering.
Yes but on the other hand, it works with your existing usb-c charger and usb-c battery if you have one. I always reach for my pinecil over my 888 because it is tiny and sits in my pen drawer. When I need it, I just unplug my laptop and plug in the pinecil.
I had tried my hand with hobbyist electronics a few times over the years, and had a few different cheap pencil style soldering irons from Radio Shack and always found soldering so hard to do well. I had no idea how people were getting the kind of joints that all the "this is how it should look" pictures showed. On a whim a few years ago I got a Hakko FX-888D, and it was like night and day! All of a sudden soldering was _easy_. I spent a couple decades convinced that I was really bad at soldering or that it was incredibly hard to do, but all that time, I had just never had a decent soldering iron.
I'm sure there are probably cheaper soldering irons that would work essentially as well as my FX-888D compared to the Radio Shack irons I had, but I don't know which ones specifically they are and recommending a $25 knockoff Hakko T12 sounds like advice that'll send someone down the same difficult path I had. (Unless the floor for all soldering irons has been permanently raised, and no one makes any as bad as those Radio Shack ones anymore?)
The old cheap ones have no temperature control whatsoever and crappy tips that oxidize quickly. I had the same experience as you, and have a trusty 888. I actually got access to a Hakko FM-206 rework station a while back and loved it more than my 888. It has a very compact tip holder, allows you to swap tips when they are still hot, heats up instantly but also cools down when idle to preserve the tip. I looked into getting something similar for home and ended up with a "knockoff T12" that uses the same tips based on discussion on the EEVblog forums. I haven't used my 888 since.
Knockoff T12s can use genuine but still cheap Hakko T12 tips (though I've never had a problem with cheap clone tips), with a temperature sensor built in. Using the word knockoff is probably misleading on my part, they aren't low quality counterfeit copies of Hakko and don't pretend to be Hakko, they just use Hakko T12 tips as it's the closest thing to a de facto standard there is. I can't even recommend a specific manufacturer for them, they just all seem to be using the same circuits and whatever one is available is fine. You need to order online basically. I don't know why they haven't replaced the $25 garbage irons sold in hardware stores, but those still exist and I wouldn't say the floor has been raised.
Pinecil is also great. It also has temperature sensors built into the tips. It has limited power so you might get frustrated on that one day in a decade that you need to solder something big, but it's so convenient for occasional use. I keep mine in my pen holder, and pull it out for short tasks. I just steal my macbook's usb-c charging cable in these cases (although pine also sells a nice silicone high temperature usb-c cable).
Both options have another benefit that I've enjoyed: They have DC power input, and don't become useless after an international move.
Regarding bench design, if the budget allows, it's nice to make the desktop height adjustable via a motor drive. Depending on mood and project, I prefer to set a specific height for working.
For additional test hardware, I like to have an IR thermometer handy to measure critical thermal components. Also nice to have a sound level meter available to calibrate any audio projects.
For soldering, nice to have a diverse set of tweezers to hold SMD components and wires.
Oof, we must have different concepts of what that means; I thought just the opposite. The dummy-load is awful and prone to oscillation on certain sources. The o'scope is entry-level, 50MHz (100 with hacks), and doesn't support any advanced analysis. There's no discussion of scope probes whatsoever. There's only one power supply, for cryin' out loud, and it's neither precise nor clean. The DMM is 3½ digits and there's only one of it. There's no AC isolation transformer, variac, or current-limit box. No signal generator, frequency counter (no, the scope isn't very good at that), etc. An ESD mat but no strap or tester.
Further, there's nothing of what you'd want to actually bring a product to market. No EMI/EMC precompliance setup. No hi-pot tester. No ESD gun.
I mean, this is a very capable setup for someone poking at arduinos and stuff. But I wouldn't want it anywhere near analog, audio, radio, or power. It's a great start for a hobbyist with modest ambitions, but "real EE work" would be the last description I'd reach for.
You have a good point. I'm thinking of prototyping more generic "stuff" with that setup. For my own work (mostly amateur radio stuff) the setup is quite different.
I also noticed that the scope was only 50 MHz and the power supply was... ungreat.
Even in a professional environment, there's a limit to how specialized the gear on a single bench can be. With a constraint of finite money, there's a tradeoff between specialized and general-purpose equipment. The Analog Discovery Pro is only 50Mhz, but it's radically smarter than any "real" scope I've ever used. It takes the place of the frequency counter and signal generator. The most obvious omission is a good power supply.
I see a fume extractor under the desk. As someone who was in the market for one recently, I'd love some discussion (like loudness, price, performance, etc).
I use the simple fan+filter ones at work, I've always found them to work fine.
Although the comparison is against normal lab air conditions, which aren't great, as opposed to something like a home lab. At home I just open the window.
The coarse carbon mats don't even filter half of the fumes.
These super basic fan+mat fume extractors do get the fumes out of your face, which is the most important part, but the particulate and VOC levels in the room will quickly exceed acceptable levels.
But even with a proper filter stack which filters over 99.9%, you can only filter what's actually captured. You still need some ventilation and it's also a good idea to run an air purifier in automatic mode to filter what wasn't captured at the source. What isn't filtered by filters is filtered by your lungs.
Absolutely essential. Fumes from lead-free solder fluxes are nasty [1]. I find that bench-top "fume extractors", consisting of a fan and thin dust filter, are extremely noisy and essentially useless. I love my Hakko FA430-16. It's relatively quiet such that a regular conversation can be had in its presence, and it really works with the right hose & hood setup.
I wouldn't call the simple fans useless - just the fact that the fumes are being blown away from your face is a huge improvement over not even having that.
Of course there needs to be somewhere for them to go, but if you can have an open window close to your bench, that solves that problem quite nicely.
As someone who owns a FA430 and has a sensitivity to flux fumes causing headaches and drowsiness, I agree with everything in this comment. Keep in mind you can become sensitized to flux fumes after repeated exposure (happened to me) so IMO it's better to go overkill on fume extraction before it becomes a problem.
I solder in the garage, never indoors. My bench has a 6" inline duct fan near the soldering station and I just run the fumes out a long section of ducting. These fans high cfm and crazy quiet. Everything stows away easily when not in use.
50% of my garage workshop is from bulk buys from hamfests and machine shop auctions. Its nearly impossible to keep organized because you always get extra stuff that you "can use later" which just adds to the clutter since there isn't always a place to put it.
Some sort of organizational method. I've thought about it alot, its more of an inventory system with an unknown amount of items and categories.
Simple things become organizational nightmares forcing you to rethink you're bench layout for example: I put my LM317s in a small bin because I only had 3 but now I have a bag of 300, I guess I need to get a bigger bin, or do I just use the small bin and save some for later but where, but how many, how do I know how many I have in total?
I fight with this a lot. Best solution I've found is add a 'bulk' label to the bin so I know to refill from my 'warehouse' stockpile when something gets low.
Yes, but it’s all well researched and they obviously spent a lot of time finding a good setup. I think quality stuff like this deserves the affiliate revenue.
And, there are no burn marks on that desk or the mat, the trash bin is empty instead of full of Jolt or Rockstar cans, and those cables? Not a single knot.
The bins are labeled and the label matching items in the bins.
Those stacked containers on the right middle shelf? Never would be put back in that fashion after labeling them.
Look at the cute scre driver organizer on the bottom wall-shelf, right side! They are in order! How?!
Those drawer bins on the middle wall shelf? It will fall on your face dumping all, specially with the sharp and pointy parts looking for soft spots in your eyes.
If they're anything like me, they cleaned it up to take the pictures, there's a bunch of junk hiding just off camera, and it will be messy very quickly after! But perhaps they're just that rare breed who actually are just normally this tidy!
> Since there were so many comments about how clean the bench is, I just wanted to leave this here to show how it normally looks when I am working on it.
I was expecting to grouch all over this, but I really like it. A lot of thought went into this, and the choices are mostly very good. A few notes from someone who's been doing this 30+ years and 10 of those years as a volunteer in a community makerspace:
* 10" shelves aren't nearly deep enough for vintage test equipment. If all you need is a DS1054Z, that's fine, but as you move up and your needs expand, you'll find that more advanced test equipment is astonishingly expensive new. Some older stuff is obsolete junk, but some is still relevant and performant, and wonderfully affordable, albeit bulky. A cart can be a good way to accommodate the larger infrequent-use items without corrupting the elegance of the shallow shelves.
* The FX888D was indeed an inflection point in hobbyist-priced soldering stations, but the UI/UX is so terrible it's easier to blow away the calibration than to adjust the active temperature, and more than half the ones I've found in the wild have suffered exactly that. (I carry a calibrator.) The result is that someone either doesn't know why their solder behaves terribly when they set "the right temperature", or they've found a setting that works and the display is just showing a completely insane number that has nothing to do with anything. Either way it completely negates the benefit of a display in the first place! The old analog FX888 is a gem, but the D is so terrible I'd love to just yeet them all into the sun. As soon as the TS100 and Pinecil came out, it no longer made sense to buy any other soldering station, full stop. I keep one of each on my bench, with my two most commonly used tips in them, so I rarely find myself swapping tips, and I can dual-wield if the need arises. And all that is still cheaper than one FX888D.
* The digital microscope is a pale shadow of the experience with a proper binocular view with true depth perception and zero lag and stuff. Worth having for portability alone, and ultra affordable, but recognize that it's a crutch and you should upgrade to genuine glass if you find yourself using it a lot. This is the only thing on the list that really made me cringe.
* The Knipex side cutter is indeed great, if you don't need a true-flush end. I really like true flush, especially on zipties, because it doesn't leave a burr. (Ask anyone with ziptie scars down their forearms about sharp burrs!) The Fastcap Micro Flush Trimmer is the best I've found, and ridiculously durable. My first one is now 15+ years old, the edges have picked up a few dents and the jaw is slightly skew, but I keep it around because it still does better work than the Xcelite cheapies. New ones put in 5+ years of hard service before they start to show any age at all, and that's frankly incredible. It's roughly twice the price of the cheapies and does 100x the work.
* For tweezers, look no further than the Electron Microscopy Sciences economy tweezers kit K5-ECO.SA, $26: https://www.emsdiasum.com/economy-tweezers-kit-00-2a-3c-5-7 These are an order of magnitude nicer than the Amazon cheapies, and within spitting distance of the same price. I've got hundreds of hours on mine at this point and I give sets as gifts to anyone getting into SMD. Friends don't let friends suffer with bad tweezers.
Interesting you say that about the pinecil, I'm a little embarrassed to say I haven't touched mine since the day it arrived after impulse buying it. I guess I assumed it wasn't as capable as my Metcal. I'll have to give it an honest try.
Pinecil is a great soldering iron, especially the 88W v2, but it definitely doesn't compare with a fixed temperature inductive Metcal. I haven't found any soldering iron with a PID loop that does, simply because there is zero delay in the Metcal between the time the tip makes contact and the RF reheating it.
I'v looked up TS100 and Pinecil and by default looks like they come with long tips?
I'm in the market of soon buying new soldering iron, so paying some attention, but I can't/won't order from US, so would be excellent if someone can point out where to buy quality tip that is short and holds solder like new after many uses.
The unified cartridge, where the heater and tip are one assembly (as seen in the TS100/Pinecil, T12, etc) tends to have much tighter thermal regulation than the separate tip style (T18 / 900M / etc). I've found it more than adequate on all but the skinniest tips.
Mechanically, eh, the grip-to-tip distance is already pretty long, another 3mm isn't going to change anything there.
I have one of the more basic UNI-T multimeters and can highly recommend it. It's always there when I need it (the single 9V battery keeps it going for years) and has great precision.
One thing that I don't have - and really want to have - is a variable power supply with constant voltage/current. They can be used when you have an unusual battery you need to charge safely, for instance. Unfortunately, they always seem inordinately expensive considering that all they are inside is a few coils and some ICs. I've looked into building one myself, and found the very informative EEVBlog series on it[1]. However, there's one thing I don't understand: how do you compensate for the voltage drop over your current measuring resistor? Is it a simple linear equation and you just boost the voltage accordingly? I'd love an explanation!
Yep I've had that Korad for years and it's great. I'm sure there are far better power supplies out there but this one is great for hacking on digital stuff and maker projects that aren't demanding or sensitive to the PSU quality (which is like 90% of projects).
In a power supply you can sense your output voltage with a differential amplifier between the positive and negative outputs that way the voltage drop across your current sense resistor is not included in the measured differential voltage. Alternatively you can use high-side current sensing where your current sense resistor is before your positive output. You can also use a differential amplifier for that, but there are purpose made current sense amplifiers which are probably best.
The reason lab PSUs are so expensive is that they are incredibly stable. A regular cheap power supply will provide a sort-of stable voltage, but there will be a loooot of noise on it. Meanwhile, even a basic lab PSU will guarantee the output voltage to within a few mV, no matter what you throw at it. This allows you to completely rule out the PSU as a potential source of faults.
Interesting as I'm considering buying a scope. Does this still give the most bang for your buck in 2023? Many online commenters mention the Siglent SDS1104X-E as a more modern alternative.
Except that those old cheap ones are almost universally analog scopes. They are pretty much completely useless for digital work. In the current Arduino-filled world, you are probably going to need a DSO.
The key differences: the screen is a bit better on the Siglent, Rigol makes you go through a stupid unlock routine to get your features, but (and this is the killer) Rigol has LXI (scriptable ethernet control) whereas the Siglent only appears to have a web-based remote control mechanism - substantially inferior IMHO.
The SDS1000X-E datasheet says that it supports SCPI over Ethernet, and there’s a programming manual available from Siglent (weirdly the links seem broken on their website)
It's not going to be a popular opinion due to the 10x difference in price, but I think the Rohde & Schwarz RTB2004 is one of the best hobbyist class scopes you can get (in terms of bang/buck).
So what's going on with the RTB2004 that is providing so much bang for that 10x price difference... and why do you claim that such a machine is "hobbyist class"?
Wow! Not my kind of workbench but I appreciate a well organized workbench. The site looks like an excellent resource if I ever wanted to get into this hobby.
This is some unpopular opinion but please, do not buy extra components thinking that you will use it in some extrea projects. Only buy components that your current design needs. It's even better if you can get a board house to assemble them before it arrives at your desk. Otherwise it is the beginning of the fall to a hoarder life.
Except if you are playing in RF or some black magic where simulation does not cut it...
I prefer to buy components I need, but buy enough extras to deal with failures or losses easily. E.g. if I'm buying SMD resistors (of reasonably common value & package like 4k7 in 0402) I buy at least 100, even if I only need 10. That way when I inevitably drop one or send one flying by forgetting to turn down the hot air flow I can just grab another. And 100 costs $0.56, 10 costs $0.14, so there's not much point trying to save money. When I run out of a cut tape of 100, I know I've used enough of them and I just buy a reel of 10,000 for $15-20. Lifetime supply, easy tracking.
That obviously doesn't apply to the more expensive components.
> That obviously doesn't apply to the more expensive components.
Or the larger ones! I bought a 100 of pretty much every standard resistor value in through-hole format from a bulk seller and came to regret the mess of loosely taped together resistor bundles intermixing and tangling and the shelf space they occupied!
This is often impractical when shipping costs more than the components.
Yeah, there are things you shouldn't be buying "just in case" - for example, a stash of SoCs will age faster than you can use them - but definitely buy a hundred of common capacitors, such as 100 nF, 1 µF, or 10 µF, rather than buying them one-by-one.
You generally don't need a complete set of all standard resistances or capacitances - there are precious few circuits where you need precisely 47 pF and 6.8 kΩ - but there's plenty of stuff that goes into almost every single project you build. Battery clips, 100 Ω / 1k / 10k resistors, 100 nF / 1 µF / 10 µF decoupling caps, LEDs, PCB-mount switches...
This is not good advice. If you are just doing paint-by-numbers projects, sure. But they usually come with the parts. Being blocked on a lack of parts is not a good use of your time.
273 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 295 ms ] threadMy 3d printer, grow lights, hydroponic automation hardware, and a little CNC project are all run on Mean Well power supplies now.
For a bench application like this, get a constant current strip from Bridgelux. They’re cheap and excellent. Digi-key sells them. The “thrive” series is a bit less efficient but has a very nice spectrum. The tiny drivers from Cuvee Systems work well, start quickly, and dim well, but any ordinary LED driver can drive them. Or the bench power supply :)
For 24V tape, here are a few decent choices for drivers:
The Meanwell PWM series. The frequency is below IEEE 1789 recommendations but is okay.
eldoLED LinearDRIVE. The best, but kind of expensive and annoying to use. Program it for a log curve. Here, for example:
https://www.ll-sales.com/eldoled-lineardrive-212d-dmx-led-dr...
These are convenient but massively overpriced:
https://www.diodeled.com/switchex.html
Thanks for the additional recommendations.
You may also experience worse failure modes with the fancier strips that have current limiting ICs instead of resistors.
(Pixel strips can be quite good, too. They seem to mostly have very high PWM frequencies. I assume this is because the electrical behavior is better that way rather than due to any particular care for the pleasantness of using them.)
Also: I see that your photos include a proper solder fume extractor, but the BOM doesn't. I think it makes sense to include one.
I did some research a few months ago for a suitable model available in the EU. My research ended up with this one: Weller ZERO SMOG EL KIT 1. About 700 EUR + VAT. (Didn't pull the trigger yet - curious about thoughts on this one.)
Trouble is, I don't think they sell anything but the plastic ones now. Working with anything more ESD-sensitive than 6L6s is a bad idea with those.
Ikea used to make things out of real wood but they haven't in years. Anything other than actual plywood will sag.
They're crap at surface impacts (putting a sheet of plywood on top is a great idea) but really good at rigidity.
If only they were available in decent depth dimensions, like they used to be.
Use Gorilla glue to laminate a piece of thin (1/4" or 3/8") ply to a piece of rigid pink foam board, with another piece of thin ply on the bottom. This foam-core sandwich is stiff but lightweight, acoustically dead, and very cheap. You can use a ton of random objects or just a vacuum-bag to apply the lamination pressure. Stick some one-by on the edge and radius it with a router, and you're done.
But I have to admit that that setup is far cleaner and more organized overall than my disaster of a workbench...
Buying SMD box kits that are already populated is worth the cost. Like this.
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-technologi...
To a newcomer, just get some common values, and perhaps not even 100 of them. Then you find out which ones you use most, or a slightly less common value you're missing but use/want, and restock those.
To anyone else, you know what you do, what you use, get that - I'm not sure there's any point in generic advice.
The labels reflect the location of the item in the folder (Folder x Page y) and also the shelf in Storage (Rack-Bay-Shelf-Place), if it's a part we use also in production.
https://i.imgur.com/awt8HMw.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xVguVGn.jpg
Sorry about the delay, HN doesn't seem to notify me about comment replies.
I wrote a simple PHP script that generates the labels. It just pulls a bunch of data from our parts database and positions the text/graphical elements on a PDF page using fpdf. The Datamatrix/barcode is generated using Zint.
Once the PDF file is generated, the script passes it to /usr/bin/lp for instant printing to a Dymo LabelWriter, or sent with an attachment disposition for downloading and printing locally.
Hope this helps, please let me know if I may be of further assistance
I’ve never found the need to keep heaps of components on hand, but I guess I’m not an electrical engineer or anything remotely like it. I just fix stuff and make junk when I’m inspired. What kind of situation would justify having so much stuff on hand? Maybe if you actually design and prototype PCBs and know which components you’ll typically need?
Ha, this is me. Maybe I should get some bins…
https://github.com/phcreery/partman
I just want to add that the best way to get over starting friction is to have everything ready to go like this. IMHO it's much easier to take care of the low-hanging fruit of arranging and cleaning, than it is to have to do that and THEN work. I struggle with organization though, so I treat that as an active exercise and devote 15 minutes at a time to the chore, rewarding myself with a cup of coffee or whatever afterwards.
There are forums where people post pictures of their benches, but it's a lot of work to document everything and you're going to use whichever distributor has sufficiently similar items in stock at your price point and can ship to your country.
https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/?f=flair_name%3A%22Work...
https://www.reddit.com/r/electronicslab/ --> more specifically about electronics, but pretty low volume.
And if you're interested, here are a bunch of "couple of year old" pictures of where I re-worked my lab-bench.
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPgDAGeRSqI5KVcqioLAAcI...
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNwJR3k2BWbG7UTuYxwD7iU...
Check out eevblog, Great Scott, Andrias Spies
The only other thing I would add is boxes or large bins. Not for tools or components, but for project work, so you can put it away and work on something else when you need to.
Otherwise it ends up spread all over your desk, Jim Williams style: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mightyohm/6926143499 (which is now at the computer history museum, apparently!)
He was also known for using bare, un-eteched copper PCB and just soldering components to the PCB and connecting their other leads with wire through the air. You can see this on his bench!
Discipline is such a struggle for me that I got rid of all of the furniture in my home office and put up a couple of Ikea Billy bookcases with long shelves that wrap around my desk in an upside-down U so that I can see everything on one wall.
Kind of like these, but with a full-size desk and $20 shelves spanning the middle, in birch:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/453667362435927208/
https://www.wayfair.com/Modway--Bixby-71-H-x-69.5-W-Standard...
Most people who saw my lab when I was in private practice would not have noticed any difference from this museum piece.
But another problem is that such pages are just really hard to maintain. In a year or two, half of the items you're liking to are going to be out of production. This is especially true for stuff like no-name test equipment, low-cost breadboards, etc. There's just no stable brand or URL to use.
I'd LOVE if all of those hobbies had a concise, illustrated guide to not only the tools I should get, but *how to organize them*. Organizing is a strength of mine on a computer, where every file fits in every folder and there's no limits of size or shape. But tell me to organize my office, and I'll end up with a perfect system that goes entirely out of whack as soon as one item is added or removed.
One drawback of the Pinecil is that it is solely the iron. You still need to add a power supply, heat-resistant cable, a stand, and a sponge. Not a huge deal, but it is a bit more than $25 to actually start soldering.
I'm sure there are probably cheaper soldering irons that would work essentially as well as my FX-888D compared to the Radio Shack irons I had, but I don't know which ones specifically they are and recommending a $25 knockoff Hakko T12 sounds like advice that'll send someone down the same difficult path I had. (Unless the floor for all soldering irons has been permanently raised, and no one makes any as bad as those Radio Shack ones anymore?)
Knockoff T12s can use genuine but still cheap Hakko T12 tips (though I've never had a problem with cheap clone tips), with a temperature sensor built in. Using the word knockoff is probably misleading on my part, they aren't low quality counterfeit copies of Hakko and don't pretend to be Hakko, they just use Hakko T12 tips as it's the closest thing to a de facto standard there is. I can't even recommend a specific manufacturer for them, they just all seem to be using the same circuits and whatever one is available is fine. You need to order online basically. I don't know why they haven't replaced the $25 garbage irons sold in hardware stores, but those still exist and I wouldn't say the floor has been raised.
Pinecil is also great. It also has temperature sensors built into the tips. It has limited power so you might get frustrated on that one day in a decade that you need to solder something big, but it's so convenient for occasional use. I keep mine in my pen holder, and pull it out for short tasks. I just steal my macbook's usb-c charging cable in these cases (although pine also sells a nice silicone high temperature usb-c cable).
Both options have another benefit that I've enjoyed: They have DC power input, and don't become useless after an international move.
Regarding bench design, if the budget allows, it's nice to make the desktop height adjustable via a motor drive. Depending on mood and project, I prefer to set a specific height for working.
For additional test hardware, I like to have an IR thermometer handy to measure critical thermal components. Also nice to have a sound level meter available to calibrate any audio projects.
For soldering, nice to have a diverse set of tweezers to hold SMD components and wires.
Oof, we must have different concepts of what that means; I thought just the opposite. The dummy-load is awful and prone to oscillation on certain sources. The o'scope is entry-level, 50MHz (100 with hacks), and doesn't support any advanced analysis. There's no discussion of scope probes whatsoever. There's only one power supply, for cryin' out loud, and it's neither precise nor clean. The DMM is 3½ digits and there's only one of it. There's no AC isolation transformer, variac, or current-limit box. No signal generator, frequency counter (no, the scope isn't very good at that), etc. An ESD mat but no strap or tester.
Further, there's nothing of what you'd want to actually bring a product to market. No EMI/EMC precompliance setup. No hi-pot tester. No ESD gun.
I mean, this is a very capable setup for someone poking at arduinos and stuff. But I wouldn't want it anywhere near analog, audio, radio, or power. It's a great start for a hobbyist with modest ambitions, but "real EE work" would be the last description I'd reach for.
I also noticed that the scope was only 50 MHz and the power supply was... ungreat.
Although the comparison is against normal lab air conditions, which aren't great, as opposed to something like a home lab. At home I just open the window.
These super basic fan+mat fume extractors do get the fumes out of your face, which is the most important part, but the particulate and VOC levels in the room will quickly exceed acceptable levels.
But even with a proper filter stack which filters over 99.9%, you can only filter what's actually captured. You still need some ventilation and it's also a good idea to run an air purifier in automatic mode to filter what wasn't captured at the source. What isn't filtered by filters is filtered by your lungs.
1: https://www.hse.gov.uk/lung-disease/electronics-soldering.ht...
Of course there needs to be somewhere for them to go, but if you can have an open window close to your bench, that solves that problem quite nicely.
Compared to no fan/filter, they're A LOT better, I'd say. And a relatively small price to pay for such an improvement.
But yeah, they're not nearly as good as a real fume extractor.
50% of my garage workshop is from bulk buys from hamfests and machine shop auctions. Its nearly impossible to keep organized because you always get extra stuff that you "can use later" which just adds to the clutter since there isn't always a place to put it.
Is there a cure for this disease?
Simple things become organizational nightmares forcing you to rethink you're bench layout for example: I put my LM317s in a small bin because I only had 3 but now I have a bag of 300, I guess I need to get a bigger bin, or do I just use the small bin and save some for later but where, but how many, how do I know how many I have in total?
When I spin up a new project I just buy everything new from digikey rather than deal with the hassle of picking out parts from the part pile.
Not any more, I already have thousands of kilos.
And, there are no burn marks on that desk or the mat, the trash bin is empty instead of full of Jolt or Rockstar cans, and those cables? Not a single knot.
The bins are labeled and the label matching items in the bins.
Those stacked containers on the right middle shelf? Never would be put back in that fashion after labeling them.
Look at the cute scre driver organizer on the bottom wall-shelf, right side! They are in order! How?!
Those drawer bins on the middle wall shelf? It will fall on your face dumping all, specially with the sharp and pointy parts looking for soft spots in your eyes.
I am calling shenanigans!
(Seriously - Good job on the write-up!)
I have the theory our desks/workbenches reflect our own mind, but I digress... :)
> Since there were so many comments about how clean the bench is, I just wanted to leave this here to show how it normally looks when I am working on it.
* 10" shelves aren't nearly deep enough for vintage test equipment. If all you need is a DS1054Z, that's fine, but as you move up and your needs expand, you'll find that more advanced test equipment is astonishingly expensive new. Some older stuff is obsolete junk, but some is still relevant and performant, and wonderfully affordable, albeit bulky. A cart can be a good way to accommodate the larger infrequent-use items without corrupting the elegance of the shallow shelves.
* The FX888D was indeed an inflection point in hobbyist-priced soldering stations, but the UI/UX is so terrible it's easier to blow away the calibration than to adjust the active temperature, and more than half the ones I've found in the wild have suffered exactly that. (I carry a calibrator.) The result is that someone either doesn't know why their solder behaves terribly when they set "the right temperature", or they've found a setting that works and the display is just showing a completely insane number that has nothing to do with anything. Either way it completely negates the benefit of a display in the first place! The old analog FX888 is a gem, but the D is so terrible I'd love to just yeet them all into the sun. As soon as the TS100 and Pinecil came out, it no longer made sense to buy any other soldering station, full stop. I keep one of each on my bench, with my two most commonly used tips in them, so I rarely find myself swapping tips, and I can dual-wield if the need arises. And all that is still cheaper than one FX888D.
* The digital microscope is a pale shadow of the experience with a proper binocular view with true depth perception and zero lag and stuff. Worth having for portability alone, and ultra affordable, but recognize that it's a crutch and you should upgrade to genuine glass if you find yourself using it a lot. This is the only thing on the list that really made me cringe.
* The Knipex side cutter is indeed great, if you don't need a true-flush end. I really like true flush, especially on zipties, because it doesn't leave a burr. (Ask anyone with ziptie scars down their forearms about sharp burrs!) The Fastcap Micro Flush Trimmer is the best I've found, and ridiculously durable. My first one is now 15+ years old, the edges have picked up a few dents and the jaw is slightly skew, but I keep it around because it still does better work than the Xcelite cheapies. New ones put in 5+ years of hard service before they start to show any age at all, and that's frankly incredible. It's roughly twice the price of the cheapies and does 100x the work.
* For tweezers, look no further than the Electron Microscopy Sciences economy tweezers kit K5-ECO.SA, $26: https://www.emsdiasum.com/economy-tweezers-kit-00-2a-3c-5-7 These are an order of magnitude nicer than the Amazon cheapies, and within spitting distance of the same price. I've got hundreds of hours on mine at this point and I give sets as gifts to anyone getting into SMD. Friends don't let friends suffer with bad tweezers.
I'v looked up TS100 and Pinecil and by default looks like they come with long tips?
I'm in the market of soon buying new soldering iron, so paying some attention, but I can't/won't order from US, so would be excellent if someone can point out where to buy quality tip that is short and holds solder like new after many uses.
The unified cartridge, where the heater and tip are one assembly (as seen in the TS100/Pinecil, T12, etc) tends to have much tighter thermal regulation than the separate tip style (T18 / 900M / etc). I've found it more than adequate on all but the skinniest tips.
Mechanically, eh, the grip-to-tip distance is already pretty long, another 3mm isn't going to change anything there.
One thing that I don't have - and really want to have - is a variable power supply with constant voltage/current. They can be used when you have an unusual battery you need to charge safely, for instance. Unfortunately, they always seem inordinately expensive considering that all they are inside is a few coils and some ICs. I've looked into building one myself, and found the very informative EEVBlog series on it[1]. However, there's one thing I don't understand: how do you compensate for the voltage drop over your current measuring resistor? Is it a simple linear equation and you just boost the voltage accordingly? I'd love an explanation!
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIGjActDeoM
the answer to your question is in Art of Electronics.
Interesting as I'm considering buying a scope. Does this still give the most bang for your buck in 2023? Many online commenters mention the Siglent SDS1104X-E as a more modern alternative.
The only real drawback of the Rigol is that both the host USB and LAN interface are buggy, so you might have trouble connecting it to a PC.
This is so well documented and made. I love it!
Except if you are playing in RF or some black magic where simulation does not cut it...
That obviously doesn't apply to the more expensive components.
Or the larger ones! I bought a 100 of pretty much every standard resistor value in through-hole format from a bulk seller and came to regret the mess of loosely taped together resistor bundles intermixing and tangling and the shelf space they occupied!
Yeah, there are things you shouldn't be buying "just in case" - for example, a stash of SoCs will age faster than you can use them - but definitely buy a hundred of common capacitors, such as 100 nF, 1 µF, or 10 µF, rather than buying them one-by-one.
You generally don't need a complete set of all standard resistances or capacitances - there are precious few circuits where you need precisely 47 pF and 6.8 kΩ - but there's plenty of stuff that goes into almost every single project you build. Battery clips, 100 Ω / 1k / 10k resistors, 100 nF / 1 µF / 10 µF decoupling caps, LEDs, PCB-mount switches...