I appreciate products that possess exquisite quality. One of my first was a synthesized RF generator. I have never seen a manual for this piece, but I managed to get it working anyway. How? By utilizing the writing on the backplane of the unit.
I acquired this pup, sans covers, in bad shape. The previous owner had piped the 10 MHz oven oscillator out to a dangling cable to be used elsewhere. I bought it for $35, and it had dirt clods from being left out in the cold.
Inspection revealed that the underside of the backplane was a treasure trove of information. What a great idea, two square feet of PCB with backplane connectors and lots of room. The wizards at GenRad labeled almost every pin with what the signal should be on it. Things like: 1 MHz CLK, 15 volts, BCD 2, etc.
By checking a bunch of pins I narrowed down the fault to a single plug-in card. I somehow motivated myself to make a pictorial drawing and then schematic close to reality. Standard signal tracing got me to a TO-5 transistor that looked shorted. The signal went there, but no farther.
The part number on the can was very weird -- No 2NXXXX or 2SXXXXX -- plus the pins were somehow not quite right. I decided to saw the TO-5 case open, and to my surprise, inside was a tiny ferrite transformer or coil. One of the coil form's pins was shorting out to the metal can.
I bent it a bit and the 150 MHz synthesized generator works. There’s no power switch. The oven wants to be on all the time. Come to think of it, that oven is twice the size of the usual crystal oven. I think I might measure its Allan variance with my new HP 5370B.
This entry was submitted by Steve Lindberg and edited by Rob Spiegel.
Tell us your experiences with Monkey-designed products. Send stories to Rob Spiegel for Made by Monkeys.
It is certainly correct that a good manual for some product is very handy and often quite valuable. Unfortunately sometimes things do not come with manuals, or, worse yet, the manual for some product is found to be a work of fiction, probably written by a marketing person who never ever talked to the designers. I have a Chinese made dual band two-way radio like that. Somebody wrote an accurate manual for it and is getting rich selling a manual that works.
At one of my previous jobs I had to write manuals, not only for the equipment that I designed, but for equipment designed by "people no longer with the organization." Often times it was an interesting exercise, since the functioning of a complex discreet digital logic system would need to be determined and understood. What made that acieveable was the fact that it was all discreet logic with no programmable devices of any kind. That give at least a chance of understanding. The other benefit of creating good manuals is when one needs to service a system ten years later, and has very little recollection as to what was done.
I ran into a similar problem with a used minivan. Every time I unlocked the car door, the alarm would go off, and it was loud. It would stop as soon as I put the key in the ignition. I tried everything to get it to stop. Finally, it just stopped by itself.
Larry M - Agreed, but you always need to verify the information.
Like you, I always purchase the OEM shop manual for my vehicles.
Recently, I had to replace the shock absorbers in my 1997 Explorer. The Ford shop manual showed two different torque values for the exact same bolts on the front and the rear shocks. Since I purchased Monroe shocks, I called them and asked about the difference. He checked, and said that his information also showed two torque values, but he readily agreed that they should both be the same as the application is identical.
I then looked up the proper values based on the size and grade of the bolts, and determined that the lower value was correct. It's likely that I would have stretched the bolts if I had torqued them to the higher value.
The moral of the story is even OEM manuals can have errors.
Manuals for test equipment and for automobiles are available. Sometimes they are expensive; sometimes you can find them for download on the internet, or on CD from eBay.
I always buy the factory shop manuals for my cars, even though they may cost $150 or more. Unlike the aftemarket manuals, they truly show you step-by-step procedures with torque specs for every fastener and cautions about parts that might easily be damaged or installed incorrectly during the repair process. I even have one for the 1962 Impala.
Charles, you can get the owner's guide and the factory shop manual for this used car if you simply spend a few minutes looking for it.
It's frustrating when you don't have a manual. My son has a used car with 197,000 miles on it. Last night, its burglar alarm decided to start beeping the horn for no reason. The horn just kept beeping, but we had no manual to determine what was wrong. I suggested he unlock the doors, hoping that the burglar alarm would see no reason to beep if it knew the doors were unlocked. The beeping stopped, but I'm still waiting for it to start up again in the middle of the night. I tried looking it up on the Internet, but got no satisfaction. I wish he had a manual.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 3
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
22 
