ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Oscilloscopes and troubleshooting

Thanks for the tips Cliff. Something to load test circuit breakers would also be nice to have.

Yeah, call it the "Zinsco Tester".

I picked up a cheap 20K battery powered hand held LCD scope from ebay a while back to try and find where X10 signals dissapeared. Didn't have much luck with it.
Haven't used it much since.
Also bought 100k Techtronix that was DOA. The guy gave a refund and told me to keep it.
I opened it up and fond a solder bridge in the sweep circuit. A quick dab of the iron and it was fine.
I sent him his money back.

Tektronics is the gold standard. We used thousands of them, mostly 453s in the system 360 days and later 465s and 485s. We beat the snot out of them, banging them around and keeping them in the trunk of the car in all weather and they still worked.
I still have a 453 and a 465. You see shots from the 465 here a lot, it shows up better on camera.

I bought one of Fluke's early scope meters on ebay. I had to replace the battery and it works great. Trouble is I have used it once when I built a DC Dimmer to control my heated vest on my motorcycle. I never even installed that project but the scope was invaluable in trimming the circuit for the optimum wave pattern.
I think that project cost me $800.00. I actually bought a pre made controller that was much smaller, weatherproof and easily mounted on the bike. It cost me $65.
So how do you actually save money by do it yourself kits?
Anyone need a portable scope?

I suppose at this point in the thread, I ought to jump in with some advice, should you decide you want to get one ....

If you're looking at VFD's, you'll want to have two channels. If it's induction heating equipment, you'll love having 4 channels. You want a unit that is battery powered; the tech guys tell me the scopes are misleading when using a grounded power supply (like a 120 receptacle).

Plan also on spending serious money on leads.