Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide
badar.tech
badar.tech
But the thing is that I never had a clear idea of how it worked; or, if some parts were broken, how to identify what was broken (other than, of course, sniffing for burned smell or charred look on the PCB). That condition is what I now realize as being unable to reason about the circuit at hand. As in, how would I arrive at that circuit by myself - being able to point at components and say, "this guy does this, and the other guy does this, and voila, we've dancing light".
I can name individual components and stuff, and can wave my hands and say what it does individually. The fact that I can't compose a circuit from scratch still gets me. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how one can build an intuitive understanding and a mental model?
EDIT: it just occurred to me "dancing lights" are called Astable Multivibrator! We were taught this at school, after I built them. Oh, I still can remember how smug I felt!
(This is how I think about software too fwiw. Start trying to write something on your own, then study the technical detail after, the technical detail will have something to relate to instead of just floating abstractly away. Then try to apply it yourself again, you'll probably be excited to use it at that point.)
I asked @theacodes on here this same question, on a post they'd written that like.. actually got into "ok, I'm putting this capacitor here, because it's gonna do <x> for me, another way I could do the same thing is..", and their reply is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33484848
I do think there'd be a lot of value in blog or youtube series of experienced circuit designers showing how they approach things, why and how they pick components etc, it's a great way to learn. The blog post that HN thread is about is really good as an example.
I've had several people recommend "The Art of Electronics" as a reference for circuits building as well, but haven't read it yet
I think I've a PDF copy of The Art of Electronics. One day...
That's my reading, too. He isn't quite the 3b1b of electronics. But that's not a statement of the quality of the content; just that he caters to a different audience, perhaps.
He works for Kahn academy as well and is an incredibly talented educator
All while separating analogue electronics, digital electronics, RF, and signal processing as appropriate.
Self-taught people are almost always too eager to get their hands on a soldering iron, and end up with a jumble of information, instead of intuitive understanding.
But if those self-taught people spend enough time, that jumble of information becomes deep empirical knowledge. At the end of the day, developing an understanding of electronics just comes down to how much time you are willing to invest in studying datasheets, working out schematics, fabricating circuits and keenly observing. Understanding the math and physics is deeply valuable and a great gift, but empirical knowledge is just as valuable- if not more. After all, Faraday (and all the others who did the work that eventually led to our mathematical and physical understanding of elecric circuits) did not need theory to do his experiments.
Using it to learn circuit design (just at the schematic level, still) would take serious effort (hundreds of hours) and would be far more effective if done with a skilled instructor.
There used to be simpler, smaller books that showed a simplified design process for circuit building blocks.
Rod Elliott's website, sound-au.com, has an extensive section on "theory" at the hobbyist level[1]. If you use it, please donate to help Rod keep the site up.
But, now there is https://learningtheartofelectronics.com/ Learning the Art of Electronics, which is a practical course with labs to complete, etc. It is very, very good. I am using subsets of it (with scaffolding/additional practice) to teach smart middle schoolers to design transistor circuits implementing amplifiers, oscillators, and logic gates.
It's an excellent book and highly regarded for a reason. I have a pro-tip about it, though... don't feel as if you need the most recent edition. The older ones are still great and relevant, and buying it used will save you a few bucks.
"Practical Electronics for Inventors" is another good one that I found much more approachable and also more inspiring.
If you live near a university, you can probably sit in on lectures (analog-design, analog circuits, microelectronics). There are also many videos on YouTube. (If you're not really interested in repairs, skip those as that is slightly different skillset.) One really good channel is Sam Ben Yaakov's https://www.youtube.com/@sambenyaakov
Developing a mental model of circuits also takes practice. The practice can mean simulation or playing with an oscilloscope and components on a breadboard but you need the feedback loop: designing/tweaking the circuit, checking if the behavior matches your expectation, finding what you missed if there's something wrong. Start with simple circuits and gradually work your way up to more complex ones.
Also, I had watched some videos from Behzad Razavi.
My favorite is LinSpice because it runs well for free on a mac, but the UI is very quirky. There are web sims available as well.
This will let you get started immediately and will let you see what's happening visually.
As the other person mentioned, you can do a lot in simulation. KiCad now has a builtin ngspice support (trough it's still a bit rough.) On windows, ltspice is another quite popular free option.
But pick up an 80's tape recorder or amplifier that's busted and you're going to have fun learning. Start on the simplest stuff you can find and work your way up from there.
This bench really looks focused on hobby prototyping, nicely done with that in mind, and with the proper assortment of components in multiples so you can go from idea to funtional circuit directly without encountering the show-stoppers (or delayers) that can be so common otherwise.
A repair bench can be made to avoid a somewhat different set of show-stoppers, there will not only be a number of different things more useful at your fingertips, but a deep store of off-bench material and tools still accessible allowing much more powerful operation. Also taking up much more auxiliary space than any one optimized bench.
Either way you never avoid all the unforseen show-stoppers, so you need a clear location to shelve & preserve an incomplete prototype or repair/restoration project, for instance while waiting for parts, in order to fully clear the bench for other work which can then be quickly accomplished from start-to-finish.
And then there's the "production" bench for hobbyists where prototyping and repair is not so much of a consideration.
Collect 'em all.
LTSpice is useful for analog electronics. You can simulate and see all the waveforms at all the nodes. You can see what small capacitors are doing.
Good discussion from a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27222457
Years later I landed on a team of makers and started to work on ambitious projects- various high power LEDs, motion control systems, etc. This is where my gap in knowledge- especially wrt high power electronics, diodes, and any chip-based component- became a real problem. So I built ambitious stuff and when it didn't work, or was flaky, I'd show it to somebody who knew electronics deeply and they'd explain whatever the next thing on my list to learn was- pull-up resistors, constant current supplies, MOSFETs to control high power devices, connecting up an SPI bus between a microcontroller and sensor, schmitt triggers, bias, etc.
I got really good at making small repros of larger projects, handing them to somebody, having them solve the basic problem, then taking the learnign from the repo and putting it into the real project.
Eventually, after doing that a lot I was able to to read Art of Electronics and got a lot more out of it. most recently I was building a custom circuit to drive a vacuum tube and had some problems, and somebody mentioned Spice. So i got LTSpice and put my circuit in, and learned just enough to have it spit out what I was seeing in real-life on my oscope. OH MY GOD, it was a revelation. The simulation produced exactly what I saw and I quickly debugged the problems. This has always been true- if I have a simulation, I can learn to intuit how things work faster than if I have to assemble them manually.
My mental model now is all about modularity- building the individual bits of a larger circuit, debugging those, then integrating them together. There are so many details in analog that you have to be aware of; if you're missing a pull-up resistor or a schmitt trigger or have too much EMI, you might get it to work 30% of the time or have to do bounce elimination in software.
Another thing to be aware of is in the past 20-30 years, a lot of discrete components gained alternatives that were chip-based and move a lot of the smarts into the chip. Sure, you can build an H-bridge from components to make a bidirectional motor driver. But that motor driver from Pololu has decades of intelligence about driving motors- and reverse polarity protection (I plug things in backwards all the time) and self-limiting (if you push too much power, it shuts down, instead of frying). I've had problems with components that could have been solved by an EE.
I don't know if I could actually design any non-trivial circuit, but then, what exactly do you need to design today? Most of the work is in identifying what your problem is, then finding the existing solutions.
EEVblog #279 - How NOT To Blow Up Your Oscilloscope!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaELqAo4kkQ
It goes into detail about how the ground lead on the probes is ground and the fact that you have to pay attention to where you are connecting them otherwise you can create a short circuit. Note that all the probe grounds are connected together, so connecting two ground leads to two different circuit nodes effectively shorts those two nodes together.
That and calculus-based Physics 2 in college.
You can get a decent basic model for under $100.
When I was a teenager, I couldn’t have imagined having access to the level of hobbyist affordable equipment that exists now.
This guy Moritz Klein has a YouTube channel explaining the wizardry behind analog synths:
https://youtube.com/@MoritzKlein0
I’ve watched the VCO one and it helped in my understanding but I still need to breadboard it to fully grasp it.
He has a collaboration with Erica synths that not only results in a cool euro rack synth but also provides a explanatory manual. This coupled with the YouTube videos I think will help in my understanding of circuitry.
https://www.ericasynths.lv/shop/diy-kits-1/mki-x-esedu-diy-s...
Probably the best skill investment you can make is learning to sketch on impedance paper. It will demystify passive networks, and it's a gateway to so many other techniques like Bode plots. Eventually you won't even need the special paper most of the time. I recommend getting one printed and laminated to use with a dry-erase marker.
It's best to learn the analysis along with how to simulate it and take the measurement. The discrepancies will reveal problems with the circuit, measurement errors, and limitations of the models. Your sketches will show how it works, you'll visually see what needs to be done even before you know how to do it, and you can play with design ideas right on the sketch.
There are of course many other techniques for different situations. If you use discrete transistors, maybe learn to sketch a load line and check if a resistor is bad using a multimeter. If you do radio, learn to do impedance matching with a Smith chart.
I would also recommend building your own project, and having it made at one of the Chinese fab houses. Even something as simple as replicating an Arduino will teach you A LOT.
I productized an arduino prototype by self teaching, and it’s all really not that hard once you get a grasp of the basics.
There are also simplified operational models of some components such as transistors and op amps.
Assembling kits is a valuable first step, in that it gets your hands working. Being a bit more confident about your construction practices helps when you later try to make your own stuff, because you don't have to wonder if something like a solder joint is working. The more you can trust that your build is modeled by your schematic, the better a chance of locating the place where it isn't. That's your failure point.
I was a physics major in college, but a year of electronics was part of our curriculum. It was taught from The Art of Electronics, first edition. We were also required to buy the National Semiconductor Linear Applications Handbook, and a book on a mainstream IC logic family, which was TTL at the time. That stuff is all available online. I was fascinated with this stuff, so I read the applications handbook from cover to cover. IC application notes are still a good thing to study.
You can take another route. There's gobs of stuff you can do with a microcontroller board and pre-made peripherals such as sensors and actuators. It won't turn you into an analog jock, but it's a legitimate design method and might suit your fancy.
Imagine something like: "This needs to be biased a little bit more positive, here we use a precision diode, that needs a little bit of negative feedback, ..."
Math is important, but much more important (IMO) is a systemic understanding of how parts of the ciecuit influence each other and where they are (or should be) decoupled more or less.
To be fair, that’s probably the correct first step in most cases. You might move on to tracing powers and grounds in the search for basic catastrophic faults, you might wipe IPA over the board and look for the bit that evaporates first (or if you’re fancy then an IR camera looking for suspect hot spots sinking excess current), but the first step on an unknown failure is probably always going to be a look and a sniff.
Edit: this is a good description https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/understa....
To be fair, I have a physics and engineering background and do really understand how these components actually work, and where this metaphor breaks down, but I still find this mental model is what I use to intuitively design circuits that work.
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.
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.
Most difficulties people have in using lead-free comes from one of three things:
1. a poor soldering iron
2. bad quality solder (the cheap stuff with bad flux is bad, duh)
3. poor technique (among other things, wipe your tip just before using, not before putting it away)
I like the Chipquik SAC305 with no-clean flux and other people I've recommended it to find it no harder to work with than Sn63Pb37.
If you are just starting out - and will therefore by definition have a poor iron, cheap solder, and poor technique - leaded is definitely the way to go. Once your first spool of leaded runs out, it is probably time to switch to lead-free.
When a joint is bad, you get obviously poor wetting and weird mushroom shapes, but even so a newbie will not really notice that even using leaded solder.
If you are starting out, and you have a poor iron, cheap solder, and poor technique, you have already made two grave mistakes. We always urge people starting out to shell out in the $50 range for something that won't actively make them suffer, and they do just fine with SAC305.
The cloudy diffuse look of lead-free SAC305 is more distinctive to my eye.
When I take production (lead-free) hardware off the line for dev work, the first step to removing a large part is to flood it with leaded solder to reduce the melting point.
Has there ever been an occupational study of lead levels among hardware engineers? I'd be interested to see it.
Took some effort with rollers to be able to pan/rotate the board while it's on the heater but does make lead-free feel like leaded for me (on dense but relatively small boards anyway.)
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.
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
One thing I would add is that having a solid bench with a replaceable surface to do dirty/cutting things on is really useful.
I have a really solid desk I made out of scaffolding planks and recycled roof timbers. The surface is then made using either Ikea bamboo chopping boards (they were on offer) or some other replaceable work top.
Another thing that might be useful for Beginners +1 is a second hand bench top multimeter. This is only useful if you are not going to be mobile. They have the advantage that they are always there, and aren't moved much. If you have a more fancy o-scope, this isn't probably needed as you can do most things on that (once you've learnt how to.)
This is personal preference, so do take this as a personal opinion.
https://www.amazon.com/Olfa-Deluxe-Handle-Rotary-Cutter/dp/B...
I just mean don't do much (or any) cutting thinking 'I should get one of those at some point' before getting one, as excuses for new tools/toys go that's a good & also cheap one!
If you need a cutting mat for actual precision cutting of paper, get one and treat it carefully.
If I could only have one of those two, it would be the silicone mat. The cutting mat is great, but really, you can use any expendable surface in its place.
An oscilloscope is fantastically useful, but it is not a precision tool. Calibration is just OK, and most use 8-bit converters.
But the calibration point still applies. On my Tek 454, there are calibration knobs built right into the UI. The user is expected to tweak and calibrate as they go, and depending on the measurement. (Often the shape of the waveform is all you are trying to see.)
Unless doing something very particular straight off the bat (like audio or power or something) a beginner is better advised to get a cheap MSO / multichannel DSO, IMO, even computer based.
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.
I'm pretty proud of the little parts system I've made, albeit much more primitive. I use pretty exclusively Mouser at this point so I invested in a cheap barcode scanner and just keep the bags in a box since I have limited space. I have a parts database that wraps SQLite and has operations such as "inventory" (taking inventory of my existing parts, updating counts), "shipment" which is a quick way to increase counts of a new shipment of parts (I just have to scan the mouser ID and then the part quantity), and "populate" which decrements each part by one per scan as I'm populating a board.
It's one of those quick-hack-and-slash setups that is really fun to build and is just another part of the yak shaving process. Overall getting into PCB design has been a very, very fun hobby, and since I have real projects I need custom PCBs for, it's been a great supplemental skill to have.
Cool article!
My 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:
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.)
“I should just build a floor on my floor!” I joked to my friend. “Yea, I could just put some plywood on top of the carpet. Then it would be safe from metal shavings and other workshop mess.”
We laughed at the ridiculous idea.
However, my subconscious wasn’t laughing. “build a floor on my floor…. build a floor on my floor” it echoed in the depths. It waited.This is so well documented and made. I love it!
Finally there are some great very cheap logic analyzers out there - modern oscilloscopes will do this too but you have to get pretty high up the price list before you can make do with just one device for both uses.
The Hakko 808 is discontinued and the FR-301 seems to be the current replacement. I used a FR-301 for a while and it was a fine tool. I've now switched over to a FM-2024 which connects to a FM-206 base station (among others). I found out that with heavy use I had many more issues with the FR-301 due to the longer tube between the nozzle tip and the solder capture chamber. The FM-2024 has a much shorter tube and the nozzle is integral with the tube. These factors make the FM-2024 more reliable and easy to clean under heavy use. The FM-2024 is also more lightweight and can be used with a gun or pencil grip. So if you do a lot of desoldering, desolder a lot of gunky/fluxy stuff, or have/want a compatible Hakko soldering station, I would suggest the FM-2024 over the FR-301.
With a low melting point it takes a lot longer to re-solidify after you heat it up which means (if you do it right) you have a lot more time to work - so you can get the solder mixture for all the connections on the entire component liquid at the same time and just pull the component out in one go without damaging the board or the component.
You do then need to clean it up as its a bit messy but solder wick works fine for that.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, they are expensive. However, you will have them forever. And you will never have to worry about too much heat, too little heat, or calibration ever again.
Your soldering will be so dramatically better that you will wonder how you ever did without them.
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!
the answer to your question is in Art of Electronics.
(1) Don't buy equipment without LXI as IMHO once you get going you really need coherent and scriptable ethernet control of everything. Yes, you can work manually or use some oddball vendor tool over USB. Yes, it's slow, error prone, and frustrating. The difference between getting things done and getting burned out is largely down to choice of tools. Spend the money.
(2) Multi-channel is important. Pretty much anything needs more than one voltage. It really sux having multiple PSUs because it doubles bench space, cable overheads, is a pain to synchronize. I would recommend a three channel supply with LXI at a minimum.
And there's even more instruments that just create a virtual COM port over USB and allow SCPI commands over that, and that's perfectly fine. You just have to configure it via something like [Keysight's Connection Expert program](https://www.keysight.com/us/en/lib/software-detail/computer-...) first.
Routable instrument control > non-routable instrument control. See https://github.com/lxi-tools/lxi-tools/wiki#background-infor...
The method I've settled on is a (cheap) set of steel storage shelves. I have a bunch of labelled cardboard boxes (shoebox sized) stacked on those shelves, a box per major category (resistors, capacitors, ...). Inside the boxes are a bunch of (cheap) zip lock plastic bags, each holding a particular value component.
This system is versatile as bag sizes can be varied according to how much space is required. (eg. the surface mount box has lots of small bags). It's easy to add new components as you just break out a new bag and throw it in the appropriate box. Have a "miscellaneous" box for bits that don't fit in a category and if that box fills up break out an extra box or two and create some new categories for some of the "misc" stuff. You can customise what goes inside the box, such as anti-static bags for semiconductors, no bags at all for things that will stack in a box or a box full of loose odds and sods of wire.
Shoebox sized is small enough to easily search, but big enough to hold things. The upside down lid of the box can be used as a sorting tray whilst searching.
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…
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.
However I can't help but think of something I read recently, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/an-ontology-of-elect....
I'm still trying to square my enthusiasm for electronics and micros with the counter points raised in that essay.
I use a logic analyzer (and PCBite probes) quite a bit, but that'll vary depending on what you do.
Other tools tend to be more specialized. Function generators are useful if doing analog circuits, board pre-heaters are important for some rework operations, and of course RF circuits have their own set of tools needed.
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.
* Use the Falstad sim to play around. It's amazing and runs in a browser.
* Plano molding ammo boxes. If you can't fit everything in a few, help is available, a few months in parts bin addiction rehab can change your life!
* Pinecil soldering iron
* Unless you're working with mains there are almost no bad meters, just ones with crappy specs. Get one with good accuracy and all the features.
* Now get an ESP32 Arduino-alike module. Something similar to a wemos S3 mini. Don't pay more than $15. Or get an M5stack.
* Those crappy little modules are your friends. Especially if you are making installations and art. You don't wanna be fussing with actual soldering for onsite parts. Use female pin jumpers. Might not even need a breadboard till later!! There's a crappy little module for everything these days and they're all pretty reliable.
* But not LM2596 buck modules Those are actually crappy. Other cheap regulators are probably fine.
* Don't buy a bench power supply. That's more towards the enthusiast stage. Instead buy yourself some USB-PD trigger modules. Watch for 12v ones, they actually give 9v aside from some newer PPS ones, because they removed 12v from the spec.
* When your thing needs power, put a trigger module on. They're like $2. If your thing needs something other than 5, 9, 15, or 20v, use a cheap regulator.
* Or just power it right from the ESP32 Arduino-ish board. Either way, USB saves the day.
* If you want to do anything beyond this, just buy exactly the stuff you need for the project. Parts hoarding is an unrelated hobby that doesn't have much to do with electronics.
* Get a 3D printer or learn woodworking if you want to make nice finished projects
* Wago connectors are your friend if you ever encounter wire bigger than 24awg or so.
* All cherry MX keyboard switch clones are good. All other cheap switches are suspect
* Microusb is evil
First of all, thank you reading the article and giving feedback. I never thought it would ever reach this many people.
I wanted to address the choices I made and the discussion of the lab being inadequate for real EE work. I wont argue that my choices are a bit over the place with some tools being at the highest end (eg. Knipex Side Cutters) while others being at the very low end (eg. Electronic Load).
The math of cost for my lab doesn't work the same way as a professional lab. I don't make any significant money from it. Hence the way I make choices is purely based on my requirements and on how much I use a particular tool. I use the hand tools most frequently hence I splurge on the expensive stuff. For the equipment (Scope, DMM, PSU), I slowly work my way upwards in price on a as needed basis. The current options work fine for me for the projects I work on and hence I dont see a good reason to invest in the more expensive piece of kit right away. If I need it, I will realize that and then go and buy that.
Compare that to a professional lab where there is a big cost of time and failures. Hence it makes sense to have higher end, more reliable equipment from the get go. And most labs are more purpose driven and will have equipment for that specific purpose anyways.
Moving on, there was good advice on soldering irons. I would admit that my setup might not be the best option for the current times. I have ordered the Pinecil and other similar options and will update the guide with my findings accordingly.
I will also add info about some of the missing stuff like the fume extractor, tweezers (dont know how I missed those), logic analyzer etc.
I will share more details about my component inventory and organization system soon.
My setup is always evolving and improving based on my needs, knowledge and experience. This was just a snapshot in time of how it currently stands with hopes that it would help and inspire other makers and engineers out there. There wont be a singular solution that works for everyone and that is the way it is. I just wanted to share what currently works best for me.
Finally, I apologize for not disclosing the Amazon affiliate links. I added that to the post and will be more transparent about it in the future.
Thank you.
* 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.
If you still want a simple Hakko soldering station, pay a bit more and get a Hakko FX-950, which has an analog turn-knob UI; the old FX-888 (without the "D") had been discontinued a loooong time ago.
I think the UI of the FX-888D was really designed for production environments, where managers set them for a certain setting and leave it there, and then prevent the operators from changing 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...
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.
As someone who has multiple times heated up my soldering iron and realized it had the <big|small> tip on it when I needed the <small|big> tip, and then gone through the annoyance of swapping tips on a hot iron, I can think of at least one thing to do with two irons.
But over a lifetime of things breaking, you'll get a lot of large quotes for professional repairs, or replacement of a much bigger part than what actually broke.
When the washer fluid sprayer on my old Tacoma failed due to decades of a wire rubbing against a sharp metal edge, I was quoted $300 for the whole harness, and 2 hours of labour at $100 an hour.
Suddenly, the $120 soldering iron didn't seem so expensive.
tldr: I'm only 30 and own thousands of dollars worth of tools, but at no point have I ever spent more than the quote to fix the problem at hand.
I still use the cheap soldering irons, carry about a dozen different ones for different occasions in my truck in a travel case.
One of the most challenging was a fish-finder on an offshore boat where the very expensive underwater sensor was just fine but it was only the business end of a long waterproof multi-shielded power, analog, digital cable which was what the marinas replace whole-hog when somebody ends up with the cable caught in the propellor or something like that.
Can't bring that kind of thing to the bench anyway.
We have a 1/3 height wheely rack in the office that can be wheeled over to someone’s workspace, and it would be more convenient than setting up a dedicated station.
Example baker's rack, https://www.amazon.com/Whitmor-Supreme-Kitchen-Microwave-Chr...
It would not look as aesthetically pleasing or perhaps be as stable as bolted and racked equipment, but the function is the same.
As for rack mount power supplies: HP models on ebay or the university auction are usually a decent option.
https://www.mwave.com.au/product/startechcom-19-18u-open-fra...
(It's so solid we've had multiple UPS and Dell PowerEdge in it .. probably hundreds of kgs, not even a small flex. 10/10 from us for the rack)
We're looking for equipment that we can fill it with to convert it to a portable lab, like power supplies and oscilloscopes that will mount to it.
The rack mountable options we found for power supplies, scopes etc were starting at ~2-6k per unit plus like 1k rack mounting kit, but ideally we were looking for max 1.5k or so.
I miss brick walls
Before I bought this I thought all solder suckers were the same. I was wrong. Well worth the ~$20, built like a tank, and works very well.
It is somewhat telling that there is more money paid on the computer - this is more a computer enthusiast who dabbles in electronics setup (not that there is anything wrong with it) - but if you're doing serious circuit design work you're going to find this setup lacking in many ways.
> How much do you think his more than a thousand different electric components for PCBs would cost, just by itself?
Easily less than $500 based on the items there's a glimpse of - probably much less.
> Do you think he buys each one in bags of 1?
I doubt it - that would be utterly stupid for passives and this guy doesn't seem stupid - if anything obviously frugal to a fault. I think there are too many corners cut - there is some bench equipment that is worth splurging a bit on. But even when you buy small quantities of SMT components they are usually cut off a tape - and in the US sold for a huge ass markup. It seems his bagging and inventory system is homegrown.
Buy all this stuff, all in for $ + shipping.
It's so difficult to find something that is the right size and shape to hold them upright, allowing organising, sifting through them to find the one I need, etc. The repackaging shown here is nice, but I don't want them ultimately stuffed into a drawer, nor can I see myself going to the effort - especially the part where I'd need to enter them all into a database.