Note to Mortuary contributors: please consider that your boss may not find your submission in the best interests of your Big Company. Once in a while we get a "please remove my submission" email, try not to send us anything that you might regret.
Note to Big Companies: Don't blame us for posting your spectacular failures, we only post what your employees send us. On the other hand, please don't rip off Microwaves101 pictures for presentations without permission, that's bad manners. Maybe it's time for some training!
New for September 2016: This comes from an undisclosed location in the Research Triangle Park. If you are doing something in a CLEAN room that causes your gown to look like this - please don't do it there, ever again. Next time perform the procedure in the parking lot wearing your Brooks Brothers cashmere suit, then the stains will blend in. Don't forget to wear safety glasses!
New for August 2016: these came from Tom:
So times have changed, I'm not working at that museum anymore, and I'm in the television field now. Things still get blown up.
What we have here:
Capacitor that launched inside a Channel Master dtv tuner (atsc set top box)
Molex style connector with tin plated stamped contact pins. These are known to fail into bad connections and/or thermal runaway in old age; the disease may be described by "Molexia". This one was on the camera head elevation motor of a very expensive robotic broadcast camera pedestal. Even guessing the price of this pedestal is outside of my pay grade. It's murderous to one's nicely painted fingernails to work on too....
The blackened power supply regulator board is from an Audio Designs & Manufacturing audio distribution amplifier unit. I can't find any real info on this company other than that they went under in 1985. This card perfumed the entire building when it went.
I'll have to ask around and see if anyone has the photos of our live truck mast vs traffic signal incident, but a Google search for live truck accident will prove comedy gold in general.
You mean like this one?... UE
New for August 2016: these images came from Adrian. We should all be thankful there are people willing to perform this type of job! Remember how you were complaining about how uncomfortable the chairs are in the conference room... just shut up please. Be sure to click on each image.
Some interesting photos of how we go about extending the life of a damaged waveguide in our network.
We had falling ice strike a 6 GHz waveguide cable twice and cause two separate dents in the cable at a site on our South Island, west coast of New Zealand.
Our clever and ingenious engineers devised a simple solution to pull the dent out of the cable. We’ve used this process a couple of times and it has proven to be extremely effective and non-invasive. In this case we got lucky as the antenna affected was only a diverse antenna and could be worked on comfortably as it could be disconnected from the antenna.
End result was a 6dB return loss improvement after repairs.
New for July 2016: Here's a contribution from Dave B:
Reported fault "Input socket missing." Well, we found it OK! Mostly. The part bolted to the inside of the case at least. The gold coloured strips, are the remains of the resin pin used to lock the centre conductor in place. Said centre conductor is totally missing.
OK, it's not difficult to break these, but you have to wonder...
New for June 2016: this came from Andy B:
Today I customized a part in a way that maybe MW101 readers would be interested in…We were testing a resonant LC match designed to match 50-Ohm line to a 13 kOhm load (and boost the voltage by 16x in the process). A home-made tunable capacitor had plates spaced apart by Nylon stand-offs, as seen in the photo. It seems the dielectric heating of about 2300 V r.m.s. at 13.56 MHz isn’t good for Nylon. In retrospect, some of the team “knew” that but in the heat of prototyping forgot. I hope the new ceramic standoffs work better!
New for May 2016: here's three videos from Lugansk, Ukraine. This is an independent country regarded by the Ukrainian government as an occupied territory. These gentlemen remind us that even in the face of overwhelming calamity, there are some great people there in Ukraine, and some of them are so interested in microwave technology that they find unconventional ways to explore it. You can send them some funds through PayPal, if you want to buy them some lab equipment or bullet-proof vests. Maybe the IEEE Ukraine section could recruit some new members here. However, it is probably not a good year to hold a conference in Lugansk...
"Boosting*" Wi-Fi signals
* Boosting has two meanings.... to increase, and as slang, to steal.
Now, let's take a tour of the city of Lugansk, right on the border with Russia, and count the un-exploded ordinance. You know how you were complaining about pot-holes in your own town? Please shut up about that and stop cheating on your taxes.
Greetings from Lugansk
Below is a video of a very dangerous practice. We don't recommend taking the magnetron out of a microwave oven and melting stuff with it.
Microwave Oven Weapon!
New for March 2016: What happens when you try to measure 1700 Vrms with a Fluke 87IV multimeter? Thanks to David. Note that the calibration sticker is still valid!
New for February 2016: Here's an RF connector that was found on a "flaky" piece of test equipment. That's all we can say!
