How to store the spare one?

[mole42uk]

This must be a common issue for many of us … when we have a piece of kit that works well and is indispensable we often have a spare one as well, probably not as good as the primary one, but probably working and absolutely essential for spare parts.

How do we store that spare one? Unfortunately, I have several pieces of test gear for which I have a spare and storing them is becoming a problem. Do I keep them complete or strip the major parts and discard the parts unlikely to be required?

Should I just get rid of the spare and take my chances? How many multimeters do I really need? How many signal generators, how many oscilloscopes - bearing in mind that my Marconi 2955 does well for much of those tests.... I daren’t count the multimeters, I probably have at least a dozen.

I have just realised that being on holiday from work isn’t a good idea…

[ex seismic]

It is a lot easier to store a complete unit than a collection of bits. And you bit collection will never have the bracket/widget/special screw that will be in the complete unit.

[G6Tanuki]

My problem with keeping a "spare" to gralloch for parts to keep your main one of anything working is that the fault in a part of your main-one is also likely to be found in the spare...

[I'm thinking here of things like decayed/seized coil-cores, 'green spot' in coils/transformers, worn tuning-drive gearboxes etc]

At least radios, test-gear etc is relatively compact: I know someone who's been trying for half a decade to do the 'make one good one out of three bad ones' trick - meaning he has three similarly-dead Alvis 432 armoured-personnel-carriers in his barn!

[avocollector]

I'm a great fan of click clack boxes for the smaller items (multimeters etcv) and rolling organisers for the larger. Not only can you stack them but you can label them, keep and index on the computer and the shed you store it in does not have to be wonderfully waterporoof etc. How I store a lot of my stuff.

[knobtwiddler]

A question that pops into my mind from time to time is, what's the least stressful way to turn something (particularly an item that consumes a bit of power, I.e. analogue scope) back on after a lay off in storage? If you know the PSU is entirely linear or unregulated, then ramping up power with a variac is a wise idea. But if it uses switching PSUs will there be any benefit? It will simply do nothing until it hits a certain voltage, e.g. 80v and spring into life. An idea would be to isolate the PSU from other circuitry and test each block in isolation, but that can be a lot of work, and near-impossible in some cases with many rails and HT circuits.

[David Simpson]

Its no secret that I've been morphing items of test equipment for a number of years. A DC Valve Tester & several HV, MV & LV DC PSU's have been the result.
Spare parts for AVO's range of VCM/Testers can be of rocking horse manure values.
The "Crystal" range of large stackable plastic boxes are ideal for a variety of radio spares & valves. With judicious use of sizes a fair bit of space can be saved.
If you are in touch with several Forum/BVWS folk in your area, why not think about pooling some of your spares.

Regards, David

[SiriusHardware]

Originally Posted by knobtwiddler

But if it uses switching PSUs will there be any benefit? It will simply do nothing until it hits a certain voltage, e.g. 80v and spring into life.

That is rather the problem. If you manage to start a 240V SMPSU on 80V it will draw a huge amount of current, far more than when running at 240V, in order to compensate for the lack of volts in an effort to try to maintain the required watts into the load.

As a general rule, slowly ramping up the voltage input to an SMPSU is quite a bad idea. This is also why SMPSUs often die during power brown-outs, unless they have an under-voltage protection circuit to shut them off if the input voltage gets too low.