Equipment and Supplier List

I've been accumulating a range of gear for my PhD project. Here are some of the things I use and like!

LC Meter - I bought and built a digital L/C meter kit from Almost All Digital Electronics. It seems to work very well! It's more expensive than some pre-built L/C meters, but claims to be accurate, was fun to put together, works down to very low values, and for some reason I didn't think to just buy a cheap L/C meter at the time I ordered it.

Rigol DS1102E DSO - I bought a vintage Philips PM3320A DSO but was disappointed to find that its voltage measurement was a bit dodgy. It works okay for signals but I don't trust the vertical scale at all, and doesn't seem to be capable of even registering DC signals. Fixing it is way beyond my expertise and servicing it would cost more than the unit did! I have purchased a Rigol unit based on recommendations from the EEVblog. It has only a 100 MHz bandwidth as opposed to the 200 MHz of the Philips, but it should make up for this by actually working, and the higher frequencies are probably better examined with a spectrum analyser anyway, since my project is dealing with CW RF signals. Oh, and the sample rate is much better. It turns out that the problem with the Philips is that my probe was 100x and the DSO assumed 1x. It's necessary to use a special in-line probe setting thingy that uses an extra pin to the side of the BNC connector. I have not yet figured out what sort of resistor I need to add to make it recognise my probes. It appears that the 50MHz version can be upgraded to 100MHz in software, which means I spent several hundred dollars more than I needed to! Ah well.

HP 8782A - 250 MHz vector signal generator. I don't have a manual for it so I have no idea how to use the vector signal generation modes, but that's okay because I'm really only interested in CW signals at the moment! For this it works great, though it is enormous and heavy. Note, I just found a HP 8782B manual, which is very similar and will be very helpful if I ever need to use vector modes.

Ultrakeet - The Australian distributor of the PulsarProFX PCB prototyping system, who are incredibly helpful and friendly. I had some reasonably good success with the Press 'n Peel system that Jaycar sell, but PulsarProFX claims to be superior and can also be used for solder masks (though it's not an intended use) and documentation (silk screen) layers. Success reports as they come to hand. My printer is a Kyocera FS-1000, which works well enough but I fear its resolution may not be quite high enough for the smaller SMD parts. It's proved more than adequate for 0805 and 0603 sizes, though. The verdict - it's pretty good, but with very small features such as TSOP, QFN and differential pairs, I found that my printer smudged a bit in one direction and the green TRF remained in between tracks and pads. Ahmad from Ultrakeet suggested using a piece of not-too-sticky tape - rub it on the affected area and pull it off very slowly and it'll remove the gunk and hopefully not the toner. I found that the stickiness of sticky tape could be reduced to useful levels by sticking it to my pants a few times to pick up some fluff.

Electronic components - I typically buy things at Jaycar if they're commonplace or RS or Farnell if they're a bit more obscure (both have an amazing free overnight shipping service for things that are in stock locally). For prototyping it's nice to have stacks of typical passive components. The ones you want are typically stocked internationally at RS. Jaycar doesn't sell any ceramic SMD capacitors at all. The solution - eBay! You can get stupid cheap SMD resistor and capacitor kits, delivered to your door for half the price of a Jaycar SMD resistor kit. No idea what the quality is like, but you'd probably be insane to use them in production. Unfortunately inductor kits aren't as readily available. A company I've had success with is Design Easy Electronics. Their inductor kits are reasonably priced and come in a wonderful binder. I'm in the process of getting hold of some empty binders from them so that I can put my large collection of SMD parts in them for easy access, as well as some 0603 resistors and capacitors. 0805 just seems way too big these days. Anyway, Design Easy Electronics have wonderful customer service and are a real pleasure to deal with.