Why do manufacturers insist on trying to expand their product lines into areas that they have no business being? For example:
1. Tektronix venturing from the cozy confines of the Time Domain into the Frequency Domain. Who could forget the disaster that was the 492?
2. Fluke doing anything besides DC/Low. Anyone cal a 9500B lately? Why they bought Wavetek is beyond me. Putting a Fluke logo on a Wavetek is like tying a ribbon around a piece of sh!t. It's still a piece of sh!t.
3. I don't mean to pick on Fluke, but Sig. Gens? I'm sure the 6060B and 6082A are ones they'd like to forget.
That's just a few to get the ball rolling, the list is endless. Just one rule, Waveteks are ineligible for nomination. Crossover, by definition, implies success achieved in at least one area. This automatically disqualifies them from consideration. The only thing they almost got right was the 4808 and that was under the Datron name. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on that one by omitting direct keyboard entry from the design. Having to use the Up/Down arrows to change the output levels got old fast. Makes you wonder if the engineer that designed it ever tried to actually use it.
Discuss. . . . . . .
If I get started on this you would be able to shut me up. I will only try to stop at one for now.
How about Panasonic making sig gens, scopes, audio analyzers, ect... hell all test equipment. They need to stick to ToughBooks and TVs.
I will reserve my comments for now or I will be typing all day and my wife will start bugging me to get off the PC.
Hey Coup,
In a similar vein, how about Philips? Those scopes and counters they made were garbage. At least they got the color right, Brown, reminiscent of they sh!t they were.
Don't EVEN get me started. I'll just give a few one word answers....
1. TEGAM (nuff said).
2. IET Labs (bought a bunch of others as well).
3. DANAHER (anyone doesn't know about them, go to their website danaher[dot]com and find out about them). They own Fluke, Tektronix, and a bunch of others.
And I'm still mad at Agilent; ever since the HP Agilent split, they haven't been the same.
Okay, one more. That HUGE pile of stuff that comes from offshore made who knows where with anyone's guess as to what brand names on them. Last night at the grocery store (a super store with a TV department), I saw a "WESTINGHOUSE" brand flat panel TV. Westinghouse? Give me a break. It was made in the same "offshore" factory as the rest of them. Someone paid a royalty to put the "Westinghouse" logo on it. I recently bought a space heater with a "Honeywell" label on it. It was made in China, and I believe I saw text to the effect that it was made "under license" from Honeywell (code language for a piece of junk someone paid Honeywell a fee to use their brand on).
Tektronix TDS3000 series oscilloscopes are like that. I was on one of those chinese product websites a while back and found a bunch of those Tektronix scopes on there only without the Tektronix logo or model.
It's pretty hard to find anything that's not like that any more.
Well, it IS monday morning. The right time for a rant.
Have a good week everyone; and thanks for putting up with my Monday morning rant.
Well I liked the 6080 I had several years ago, last I knew they had gone to Gigatronics, don't know if they still exist.
On to the 9500, I remember ads touting the difference between leveling a signal and running it through a cable to the UUT (5500A/5520A) vs leveling the signal at the UUT (head). In the last several years Fluke was doing growth by acquisition (Hart Scientific & Reliable Power Meters come to mind). I think the technology/knowledge they got with the 9500 was applied to the 9640A reference source, pretty neat piece but not bullet proof for sure, it fills the role the HP 3335A did plus has a much higher frequency, 3 or 4 GHz I believe, it's the sh!t if your dealing with a lot of the smaller handhelds like Anritsu makes.
Some of the Teks seem OK but I haven't used them for any length of time like the RSA series.
Rhode & Schwarz makes some pretty decent spec ans and the Advantest units I used in the past were also pretty good but had an annoying orange display. For manual operation & general use I like the HP 8592.
Back to 9500s, last year I had 4 9530 heads loose corrections, this year 2 of them did it again. I'm leaning towards static as it happened in January both times and we are running humidifiers to kedp above 20% rh.
Anybody know how to get one of them open in a non-destructive way?
Beers, Beers, Beers..
Not sure how many of you get out to meeting / trade shows.. But if you see me in person, just mention this thread and your post, and I will buy you beers, beers, beers..
I love it when people leave honest opinions about products they work with.. Little colorful, but and am sure everybodies opinion has a real world stroy behind it..
Quote from: CalLabSolutions on 02-05-2009 -- 01:06:22
Beers, Beers, Beers..
Not sure how many of you get out to meeting / trade shows.. But if you see me in person, just mention this thread and your post, and I will buy you beers, beers, beers..
I love it when people leave honest opinions about products they work with.. Little colorful, but and am sure everybodies opinion has a real world stroy behind it..
I am holding you to that. :-D
Quote from: CalLabSolutions on 02-05-2009 -- 01:06:22
Beers, Beers, Beers..
Not sure how many of you get out to meeting / trade shows.. But if you see me in person, just mention this thread and your post, and I will buy you beers, beers, beers..
I love it when people leave honest opinions about products they work with.. Little colorful, but and am sure everybodies opinion has a real world stroy behind it..
Lets see.....NCSLI, San Antonio, last week of July 2009, booths 614 and 616.
See you there, bring your American Express!
And let's hope Fluke doesn't do to DH Instruments what they did to LEM, Dynatech Nevada, Bio-Tek, and everything else that they bought up to make Fluke Networks and Fluke Biomedical, finding repair info/calibration procedures for these instruments (even for their pre-Fluke acquisition models) is like squeezing blood from a stone...
I'm working on getting my company to send me this year. Last "NCSL" conference I attended was when it was still NCSL (without the I - REMEMBER: THERE IS NO "I" IN NCSL - bad joke).
I went to it in Atlanta at the Peachtree center in 97 I think. I'm only a couple of hours drive from San Antonio. If enough of us are potentially going, maybe we could arrange a meet up spot.
We wanted my company to get a booth, but I don't think that's happening. Maybe by the next conference. But hopefully I can go to it this time.
Quote from: Hawaii596 on 02-05-2009 -- 08:15:24
I'm working on getting my company to send me this year. Last "NCSL" conference I attended was when it was still NCSL (without the I - REMEMBER: THERE IS NO "I" IN NCSL - bad joke).
I went to it in Atlanta at the Peachtree center in 97 I think. I'm only a couple of hours drive from San Antonio. If enough of us are potentially going, maybe we could arrange a meet up spot.
We wanted my company to get a booth, but I don't think that's happening. Maybe by the next conference. But hopefully I can go to it this time.
Atlanta was 97. I was there ( of course ), but I think it was at the Hyatt.? The NCSLI has really grown since then.
Anyway, I have met alot of the guys here already while attending The NCSLI Conf. in the past. Ol'Dave being one of them.
QuoteAtlanta was 97. I was there ( of course ), but I think it was at the Hyatt.? The NCSLI has really grown since then.
You remember well Coup. At the Hyatt.
Heh, Fluke, 9640 = FAIL. TRAGIC. Stick to DC/Low - stay outta "sig gen". I can recall the Army buying a HUGE pile of these and having to send an insane amount of em back cause they didn't work, straight outta the box, cal cert and all.....
TEGAM. Ha. While I do love playing with the thermistors 18 GHz and below, the F/M1135 are CRAP. And let's hope they fixed their new power meter, the supposed 432A replacement..... if it blows up my 478AH75 I'm gonna kill someone.
Agilent. Yes, I am going there. You have to LOVE a company that specs their equipment tighter than even NIST can spec...... something about having traceability to the UK if I am not mistaken. I am REALLY hoping their new power sensor cal station is a step in the right direction (see TEGAM above)
Fluke/Wavetek??? Did Wavetek EVER make anything that worked?
I suppose that would depend on your definition of "worked".
The lights came usually came on. . .
Was that the Hyatt. I remember there was a round tower and a beautiful huge lobby, and the subway came directly in from the airport. But the paint in my room was peeling off the ceiling. I felt like it was glitzed up in the lobby with kind of dumpy rooms.
Quote from: Hawaii596 on 02-13-2009 -- 10:15:00
Was that the Hyatt. I remember there was a round tower and a beautiful huge lobby, and the subway came directly in from the airport. But the paint in my room was peeling off the ceiling. I felt like it was glitzed up in the lobby with kind of dumpy rooms.
I am almost sure it was the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
I went on my honeymoon in hawaii and we stayed on 4 islands. The only hotel that was not that way was the one on Kaui. The other 4 were all glitz in the lobby and all sh** in the rooms!!
Back to the thread subject matter I have allllll kinds of problems with th IET labs VI-700 I even had one come in cert and all that would not turn on !!! How do you calibrate something that does not work at all??? Main problem is drift on the millamps side they always seem to drift out of tolerance fast and following adjustment procedure pretty much gets you no where till you hear the littlle click click click at the end of the variable resistors travel........... NOPE still out of tolerance send it back to the factory for repair!!!