Broken electronics

[rebeccmeister]

In preparing one of my syllabi for the spring, the one for Animal Physiology, I've been spending a bit more quality time in the Animal Physiology lab space, starting to inventory and track things down.

This is an adventure. At some point I should pause and take photos. So far, I've just been pulling out various pieces of the most obviously broken equipment (labeled as "broken" or "does not work"). Mostly this has been microscope light sources and thermocouples. I know there's a "broken" microbalance in there, too.

I think I'm also going to emulate one of my PhD mentors by creating a "Manuals" cabinet, as it seems like up to this point the manuals for various instruments have simply been crammed into cabinets with the instruments themselves.

On the one hand, this is a lot of stuff to sort through. But on the other hand, it's satisfying to mix some tangible work in with all of the intangibles.

I am thinking that I should see if any of the prospective research students are interested in doing small instrument repairs. A useful skill to develop.

Comments

[bluepapercup]

Oh, having Manuals around is vital! We use a magazine file (tons of different kinds available online) to organize our household manuals for appliances and such, super useful.

[randomdreams]

I totally recommend seeing if you can find online versions of the manuals, because paper ones get trashed so quickly.
Thermocouples are so easy to replace, but, if you want, it's pretty easy to make a thermocouple welder so you can fix them. Beefy power supply and a relatively large capacitor is all it takes.