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Repairing an Oltronix B602D Power Supply This is a repair and maintenance description of a 1970s linear bench power supply: the Oltronix LABPAC B602D. I bought this unit from a scrap dealer and managed to negotiate a good price. It is a classic 1970s linear laboratory power supply with two channels: 0–30 V at 1.4 A and 0–60 V at 0.7 A. The channels are fully independent, with an isolation voltage to each other and to chassis of ±500 V DC (according to the manual). It even features a “digital” voltage display. Oltronix was a Swedish company that produced high-end laboratory equipment; parts of the company still exist today and are based in the Netherlands.  There is also a similar three-channel model, the B603D, which includes an additional 6 V supply.   I opened the unit and cleaned out some dust before powering it on. “Take it apart,” as Dave Jones says. Internally, it looked reasonably good. On power-up, the 0–30 V channel worked fine, but the 0–60 V channel did not. I then...

Helping hand that works

When soldering, you sometimes need a third hand keeping things in place. I got this idea from the eevblog forum ( https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/a-3rd-hand-that-actually-works!/ ) and the excellent blog post here: https://www.engineerable.com/single-post/diy-the-best-helping-hands-for-electronics-soldering-pcb-work-jewelry The thing is, that cheap "helping hands" or "third hands" frankly sucks.  I'm thinking on the ones that look like this:   I've used these ones and the mechanism is limited and the crocodile clips are annoying and don't grip well. You can improve them slightly by adding some heat shrink tube on the teeth. I do use also other kind of tools, e.g. a regular vice: This is an excellent vice for the price. The model is  RÖHM 863421 , and it's perfect for small hobby projects including drilling and cutting.  I also have this holder for PCBs. It works OK:   Now I did have one of these magnetic holder stands for dial indicators. But ...