dangerous profession...

[server]

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[John Robertson]

On 2020/09/30 8:46 p.m., jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Does your state not have Workers Compensation boards that check for
proper working conditions?

Or were you trying to cook hamburgers and only got three actually done?
Perhaps experimenting with electrocuting hot dogs at the same time??

John ;-#)#

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 11:46:24 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

In other words, a typical week?

I have to sort and inventory over 700 reels of SMD components that I picked up, surplus. That will likely lead to a lot of paper cuts. Most are capacitors, from 0.3 pF to 6800 pF. I am waiting on a bundle of 7\"x7\"x10\" boxes that were supposed to have arrived over a week ago. I can put 18 to 20 reels in each box. I already had over 600 reels of components, most of which are full.

Ice cream is not on my diet, unless it is sugar free and that is hard to find, since Hurricane Irma.

 

[Joerg]

On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 01.10.20 um 05:46 schrieb jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

But the second and third time, the burger was already pre-chewed?


Gerhard

 

[Three Jeeps]

On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 1:09:03 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:

On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

https://homebrewsupply.com/fermentis-safbrew-be-256-yeast/

 

[server]

On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 22:08:54 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com>
wrote:

On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.


Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!

Poor baby! That\'s terrible.

The ice cream sandwich shortage is at least as bad. You can apply one
directly to a burn, or eat it, and either way you feel better.

I\'m tuning the tempco of my Colpitts oscillator, which is tucked into
the corner of a tallish enclosure, so it\'s really hard to replace 0603
parts; many Metcal burns. Through a modest amount of genius and a lot
of experimenting and dumb luck, I\'ve got the f/t curve parabolic with
the flat at 40c, and maybe 35 ppm p-p over my operating range. I can
tolerate +-500 before my PLL breaks.

Spice only helped a little. As Mike E says, the real value of Spice
isn\'t to prove anything, it\'s to train your instincts.

Part of the compensation is, basically, an FR4 capacitor, which has a
strong positive cap TC. The issue will be, can I get this sort of
tempco in production?

I want very constant sine wave amplitude, beginning with the first
oscillation cycle. Holding that amplitude turned out to be tricky and
of course tangled with the tempco issue.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 10:31:06 +0200, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de>
wrote:

Am 01.10.20 um 05:46 schrieb jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

But the second and third time, the burger was already pre-chewed?


Gerhard

Well, it was gigantic so I cut it in thirds when I got it. Some
20-something would have et the whole thing. We actually got it in a
sit-down restaurant, where sit-down is a table under a tent on the
sidewalk.

They also had superb beignets with a white chocolate dipping sauce.
One side effect of Hurricane Katrina was a diaspora of New Orleans
chefs all over the country, people who never imagined leaving but who
won\'t now go back. The cajun/creole effect is very visible. And tasty.

We need a modest disaster in Virginia to spread out some good BBQ
folks.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Joerg]

On 10/1/20 7:45 AM, Three Jeeps wrote:

On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 1:09:03 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
https://homebrewsupply.com/fermentis-safbrew-be-256-yeast/

Nine bucks, yikes! Oh well, goes like ammo I guess. A poster in the brew
NG pointed out another place but I found that their BE-256 yeast was
quite old.

Somehow production of this stuff must have stopped.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 10/1/20 8:06 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 22:08:54 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.


Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



Poor baby! That\'s terrible.

The ice cream sandwich shortage is at least as bad. You can apply one
directly to a burn, or eat it, and either way you feel better.

I\'m tuning the tempco of my Colpitts oscillator, which is tucked into
the corner of a tallish enclosure, so it\'s really hard to replace 0603
parts; many Metcal burns. Through a modest amount of genius and a lot
of experimenting and dumb luck, I\'ve got the f/t curve parabolic with
the flat at 40c, and maybe 35 ppm p-p over my operating range. I can
tolerate +-500 before my PLL breaks.

Spice only helped a little. As Mike E says, the real value of Spice
isn\'t to prove anything, it\'s to train your instincts.

Part of the compensation is, basically, an FR4 capacitor, which has a
strong positive cap TC. The issue will be, can I get this sort of
tempco in production?

I want very constant sine wave amplitude, beginning with the first
oscillation cycle. Holding that amplitude turned out to be tricky and
of course tangled with the tempco issue.

In production an FR4 cap can get iffy. How about a little local heat
inside a regulator loop that keeps the temperature well above max
expected but constant? The heater could be a 1206 resistor.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 01.10.20 um 17:39 schrieb Joerg:

On 10/1/20 7:45 AM, Three Jeeps wrote:
On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 1:09:03 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
https://homebrewsupply.com/fermentis-safbrew-be-256-yeast/


Nine bucks, yikes! Oh well, goes like ammo I guess. A poster in the brew
NG pointed out another place but I found that their BE-256 yeast was
quite old.

Somehow production of this stuff must have stopped.

First google result:

<
https://www.hobbybrauerversand.de/Safale-BE-256-Abbaye-obergaerige-Trockenhefe-115-g
>

cheers, Gerhard

 

[server]

On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 08:42:40 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com>
wrote:

On 10/1/20 8:06 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 22:08:54 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.


Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



Poor baby! That\'s terrible.

The ice cream sandwich shortage is at least as bad. You can apply one
directly to a burn, or eat it, and either way you feel better.

I\'m tuning the tempco of my Colpitts oscillator, which is tucked into
the corner of a tallish enclosure, so it\'s really hard to replace 0603
parts; many Metcal burns. Through a modest amount of genius and a lot
of experimenting and dumb luck, I\'ve got the f/t curve parabolic with
the flat at 40c, and maybe 35 ppm p-p over my operating range. I can
tolerate +-500 before my PLL breaks.

Spice only helped a little. As Mike E says, the real value of Spice
isn\'t to prove anything, it\'s to train your instincts.

Part of the compensation is, basically, an FR4 capacitor, which has a
strong positive cap TC. The issue will be, can I get this sort of
tempco in production?

I want very constant sine wave amplitude, beginning with the first
oscillation cycle. Holding that amplitude turned out to be tricky and
of course tangled with the tempco issue.


In production an FR4 cap can get iffy. How about a little local heat
inside a regulator loop that keeps the temperature well above max
expected but constant? The heater could be a 1206 resistor.

That\'s interesting. The uP knows the board temp, so it could PWM a
resistor or so in the oscillator region, probably on the back side of
the board. I\'ll include that on the next PCB rev.

We already tweak the fan speed to try to keep the overall PCB
temperature constant, which will help a lot. That will help other
circuits on the board too. The box will self-heat about 35C or so,
with the fan off.

The fan algorithm is simple: 10 times a second, if the temp is below
40c, jog the fan voltage down. If above 40c, jog it up. The jogs are
small and it powers up slow, so there is no acoustic drama.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uf15erm1nj3tjjk/Colpitts_125.JPG?raw=1

There are varicaps and things too. Everything affects the tempco. I
can tune C4 to zap the 1st order term.

Worst case, every batch of PCBs could have a different value of C4.
Production would *not* like that.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Jim MacArthur]

Quick bit of first-aid for soldering iron burns:
Keep a few fast-food ketchup packs in a nearby freezer. (They don\'t freeze solid). When you burn yourself, _quickly_ fetch a ketchup pack from the freezer and hold it on the burn until it runs out of cold -- several minutes.. It\'s the right amount of cold for the right amount of time, and the squishy pack makes good contact with the burn. Don\'t knock it till you\'ve tried it.

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 14:58:54 -0700 (PDT), Jim MacArthur
<jimbmacarthur@gmail.com> wrote:

Quick bit of first-aid for soldering iron burns:
Keep a few fast-food ketchup packs in a nearby freezer. (They don\'t freeze solid). When you burn yourself, _quickly_ fetch a ketchup pack from the freezer and hold it on the burn until it runs out of cold -- several minutes. It\'s the right amount of cold for the right amount of time, and the squishy pack makes good contact with the burn. Don\'t knock it till you\'ve tried it.

I think I\'ll keep using ice cream sandwiches.

Most of the burns are little swipes off the side of a Metcal tip, very
hot but small. Just did another one.

Sometimes I\'m holding a bus wire or a resistor lead in place while
it\'s being soldered, and I notice it\'s burning my finger. Best to
endure the pain and get the joint right. Fingers eventually fix
themselves.

 

[bitrex]

On 9/30/2020 11:46 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Is you trying to confirm whether you\'re immortal or something?

 

[Joerg]

On 10/1/20 3:09 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 14:58:54 -0700 (PDT), Jim MacArthur
jimbmacarthur@gmail.com> wrote:

Quick bit of first-aid for soldering iron burns:
Keep a few fast-food ketchup packs in a nearby freezer. (They don\'t freeze solid). When you burn yourself, _quickly_ fetch a ketchup pack from the freezer and hold it on the burn until it runs out of cold -- several minutes. It\'s the right amount of cold for the right amount of time, and the squishy pack makes good contact with the burn. Don\'t knock it till you\'ve tried it.

I think I\'ll keep using ice cream sandwiches.

Most of the burns are little swipes off the side of a Metcal tip, very
hot but small. Just did another one.

Sometimes I\'m holding a bus wire or a resistor lead in place while
it\'s being soldered, and I notice it\'s burning my finger. Best to
endure the pain and get the joint right. Fingers eventually fix
themselves.

At one client they recommended Southern Comfort for just about anything.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 10/1/20 9:17 AM, Gerhard Hoffmann wrote:

Am 01.10.20 um 17:39 schrieb Joerg:
On 10/1/20 7:45 AM, Three Jeeps wrote:
On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 1:09:03 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months
and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
https://homebrewsupply.com/fermentis-safbrew-be-256-yeast/


Nine bucks, yikes! Oh well, goes like ammo I guess. A poster in the
brew NG pointed out another place but I found that their BE-256 yeast
was quite old.

Somehow production of this stuff must have stopped.


First google result:


https://www.hobbybrauerversand.de/Safale-BE-256-Abbaye-obergaerige-Trockenhefe-115-g
        

cheers, Gerhard

Sorry, 1st attempt went via PM.

Quote \"Ihr Shop wurde installiert. Lesen Sie in unserem Guide mehr zu
ersten Schritten mit JTL-Shop, der Grundkonfiguration und dem erstem
Abgleich mit JTL-Wawi\".

Ahm ...

Anyhow, there are also a few shops in the US that still have some but
it\'s quite old, expiration date is too close. Yeast viability is a big
thing with brewers and especially so when brewing a Belgian abbaye ale.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 10/1/20 9:30 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 08:42:40 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 10/1/20 8:06 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 22:08:54 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:

On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.


Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



Poor baby! That\'s terrible.

The ice cream sandwich shortage is at least as bad. You can apply one
directly to a burn, or eat it, and either way you feel better.

I\'m tuning the tempco of my Colpitts oscillator, which is tucked into
the corner of a tallish enclosure, so it\'s really hard to replace 0603
parts; many Metcal burns. Through a modest amount of genius and a lot
of experimenting and dumb luck, I\'ve got the f/t curve parabolic with
the flat at 40c, and maybe 35 ppm p-p over my operating range. I can
tolerate +-500 before my PLL breaks.

Spice only helped a little. As Mike E says, the real value of Spice
isn\'t to prove anything, it\'s to train your instincts.

Part of the compensation is, basically, an FR4 capacitor, which has a
strong positive cap TC. The issue will be, can I get this sort of
tempco in production?

I want very constant sine wave amplitude, beginning with the first
oscillation cycle. Holding that amplitude turned out to be tricky and
of course tangled with the tempco issue.


In production an FR4 cap can get iffy. How about a little local heat
inside a regulator loop that keeps the temperature well above max
expected but constant? The heater could be a 1206 resistor.

That\'s interesting. The uP knows the board temp, so it could PWM a
resistor or so in the oscillator region, probably on the back side of
the board. I\'ll include that on the next PCB rev.

We already tweak the fan speed to try to keep the overall PCB
temperature constant, which will help a lot. That will help other
circuits on the board too. The box will self-heat about 35C or so,
with the fan off.

The fan algorithm is simple: 10 times a second, if the temp is below
40c, jog the fan voltage down. If above 40c, jog it up. The jogs are
small and it powers up slow, so there is no acoustic drama.

That only works if there are no other major variable heat producers far
away from the oscillator.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uf15erm1nj3tjjk/Colpitts_125.JPG?raw=1

There are varicaps and things too. Everything affects the tempco. I
can tune C4 to zap the 1st order term.

Worst case, every batch of PCBs could have a different value of C4.
Production would *not* like that.

Whenever I had something like that I\'d always use a varicap and some
sort of algorithm. The production guys didn\'t even have to know it was
there.

Of course, there is the other option of running the whole board in
transformer oil

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-10-01 11:39, Joerg wrote:

On 10/1/20 7:45 AM, Three Jeeps wrote:
On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 1:09:03 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
https://homebrewsupply.com/fermentis-safbrew-be-256-yeast/


Nine bucks, yikes! Oh well, goes like ammo I guess. A poster in the brew
NG pointed out another place but I found that their BE-256 yeast was
quite old.

Somehow production of this stuff must have stopped.

You can\'t culture your own?

The monks didn\'t buy yeast from Amazon.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Joerg]

On 10/2/20 2:10 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-10-01 11:39, Joerg wrote:
On 10/1/20 7:45 AM, Three Jeeps wrote:
On Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 1:09:03 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 9/30/20 8:46 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

In the last week, I\'ve been burned 6 times, shocked once, punctured
(with blood) twice, and had to eat a single burger for three lunches
in a row. And we are out of ice cream sandwiches.

Could be worse. BE-256 yeast is out of stock everywhere for months
and I
can\'t brew Belgian abbaye ales. That\'s serious!



--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
https://homebrewsupply.com/fermentis-safbrew-be-256-yeast/


Nine bucks, yikes! Oh well, goes like ammo I guess. A poster in the
brew NG pointed out another place but I found that their BE-256 yeast
was quite old.

Somehow production of this stuff must have stopped.


You can\'t culture your own?

The monks didn\'t buy yeast from Amazon.

Sure you can and I do that to some extent. I harvest yeast from previous
batches. For example, because of BE-256 being expensive and now almost
unobtanium I stagger my Belgian beers. A Paterbier is mild and takes one
pouch. Then I siphon off trub but for more 2x the initial number of
yeast cells. Then I brew a Tripel or Quadrupel which needs a high dose
of yeast. Later I siphon that and make a Porter with it. The rest of the
trub doesn\'t go to waste either because we bake bread with it.

However, so far I\'ve never dared to go past 4th generation with yeast.
Mutations can result in off-flavors or worst case a ruined batch.
Considering that 4-5h of work go into each batch that would not be cool.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/