Scrap Keithley 2400 SourceMeter Repair Attempt

$2 PCBs & NEW discounted colors → jlcpcb.com/IYB
Finest soldering stations www.welectron.com/Soldering-S...
New TL866-3G EPROM multitool s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DkT...
Creality Halot 3D Printer bit.ly/3KIBbEA
Creality Washing/Curing Machine bit.ly/3TwV0mF
More from me / marcoreps
Keithley 2000 series ferrite holder www.thingiverse.com/thing:549...
Keithley 2000 series Benchkit 3D models www.thingiverse.com/thing:240...
Bootstrapped OPA simulation tinyurl.com/2jnzoqfh
V & I clamps simulation tinyurl.com/2pgxz8du
Supply selection simulation tinyurl.com/yy2vch3v
xDevs article xdevs.com/fix/kei2400/
OG @EEVblog Teardown • EEVblog #718 - Keithle...
00:00 Intro
00:28 Inspection
02:36 Firmware
03:29 Front panel
03:52 AC/DC PSU
04:50 Display
07:43 Digital section
09:17 Analog board
11:35 Power food chain
14:37 Output stage
17:02 Hot DACs in your neighborhood
18:13 Misc analog
19:13 MicroManager
19:58 Mechanical

[@occulus2615]

I dont know any of these words, but I'm happy to be here.

[@Floris_VI]

Same lmao

[@Potsie]

I understand most of the words used, it is just the acronyms that confuse the hell out of me

[@WizardTim]

Fantastic work! I bet this poor abandoned SMU is now the happiest one in the world.

[@KYBERWERK]

Wow, that's a really impressive repair job. I would've written that thing off, respect for actually getting everything working again

[@tollav]

WOW way to spoil the show..... 😉

[@trickyrat483]

@@tollav Pro tip: read the comments AFTER watching the video. :)

[@aterack833]

One thing JLC PCB knows (aside from memorable names) is that repeated sponsorship and no commercials is the way to get customers, I’ve seen them on a few channels and a few times, especially on your channel, and it’s now in my memory and frequently refreshed when you get sponsored and put out a video, the moment I need a pcb for something or anything they can do, they will be the first name in my head

[@davemoore5222]

I love this channel. Calibration and repair with humorous commentary takes me back. With over 40 years in calibration and repair until redundancy due to the virus, some of the ‘old’ equipment in your vlogs I can remember when new and ‘revolutionary’ 😉 Keep up the good work.

[@greglinder5784]

As for why they fetch so much on Ebay; Because they're super useful, save a ton of time, and make for easier, smaller workbenches. There's also not a ton of vendors selling things that can do all a 2400 can do in one instrument. We work in solar PV cell testing (among other things) and using the SMU gets you the Source (and Load) and the M in once place. We just sent in a 2420 for re-calibration to build out some new test capabilities. For PV Cells, you can do diode curve traces (dark current measurement, as a programmable source), then park them in the sun and do the lit IV sweep (as a load) and then set your MPPT point under software control to load test them. Having a thing that doesn't really care what quadrant you operate it in is really handy for these kinds of jobs. Not a lot of people seem to do this kind of testing, though, so the supply/demand shifts towards "being more rare", hence the price increase. Also, as of now, the supply chain stuff is *madness*: We tried to order a new one for this project, and the 2450's are running multi-month leads, making it hard for us to schedule work.

[@vibrolax]

Fusion 360 saved me a lot of time when it was released with a free hobbyist license. But I always had the feeling it wouldn't last. Same as Sketch-Up before. We feast on crumbs that fall from corporate tables from time to time, but it's folly to depend on them in the long term.

[@adbethsing383]

In your opinion, what are the best free MCAD packages out there today? I have a semi-working knowledge of FreeCAD but I find it clunky and awkward. Anything more intuitive?

[@vibrolax]

@@adbethsing383 I have no idea if there is a better free-to-use mcad package. I've never used any MCAD software enough to get beyond the feeling of clunkiness.

[@EricHallahan]

TIL Solid Edge has a Community edition. Sounds like an extremely competitive offering in the non-commercial CAD market.

[@Produkt_R]

@9:00 I knew these when I was I kid, and I wanted one. One morning somewhere in the 90's I came out of my bed and heard this sound. I was sure I would get one of these. Instead It was our cat barfing on the floor... It made the same sound :(

[@benmodel5745]

Those mains cycle sensing caps on the PCB are pretty clever. Neat trick

[@zyeborm]

I literally said "that's clever" when he described it lol

[@COASTER1921]

Surprised to see a Keithley 2400 here! We still use this exact model daily in the lab. I think part of the high prices could be the number of custom software setups built around them. Upgrading to a newer SMU would require reworking software when the 2400 performance is already sufficient, so why bother upgrading?

[@bartoszkazmierczak7249]

I'm pretty sure the new touchscreen Keithley SMUs have a 2400 compatibility mode built in

[@gidonijenhuis400]

It has but it has some quirks and does not perfectly respond the same to all commands (found it out the hard way). Luckily you can still buy the 2400, or the cheaper 2401 if you need no more than 21V.

[@jond1536]

With Marco, I believe it is to keep the stray PPM's in the unit and not let them excape.

[@oshiro1]

I absolutely love your content. However... I'm a bit scared those ball bearings will find their way out of the holes eventually. My personal choice would have been to have the holes smaller and clamp the balls between the plate and the transistor, instead of the press fit. I wouldn't want you to have bearing balls rolling through the enclosure hugging IC pins...

[@MrMaxeemum]

Agreed, with many thermal cycles the balls may find themselves coming loose. A smaller countersunk hole or he could still countersink those holes and use larger balls. Admittedly it will be harder to assemble but the peace of mind that they will not fall out is worth much more imo.

[@st3althyone]

The heatsink takes care of the heat coming off those components. There's no way those ball bearings are coming out.

[@oshiro1]

@@st3althyone The peace of mind of selecting slightly bigger bearing balls far outweighs any risk of puffing out the magic smoke, however small the chance may be. And no, it's not just the heat (which definitely still is there), there's something called creep too.

[@moki123g]

I'd just put heatshrink around the bars.

[@magikben]

A simple solid backing plate behind the plate with the balls in it would be a quick and simple fix.

[@brucewilliams6292]

You bring so much joy to the world when you do these sort of videos. I admire your attention to details. THANK YOU!!!

[@randynovick7972]

Glorious. So pleasing to watch. Very interested in seeing the calibration and testing. Many thanks.

[@WoodyW2k]

Great effort with the usual humour and high production quality. Thank you!

[@tranxn7971]

Very impressive. I would have given up the repair job because of so many missing parts... Thank you a lot for this awesome repair video.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Totally agreed about cloud based software. I avoid it all in favor of open source and offline software. Don't always have connectivity to the internet, and if the company goes out of business or just decides to kill the product, you'd be SOL.

[@kaukospots]

the problem is open source and offline software needs to be *better*, and a lot of the time it isn't

[@gorak9000]

That goes for all cloud based hardware too - especially prevalant in the 'IoT' space. Company disappears, and all your happily working stuff becomes expensive paper weights in the blink of an eye. Never rely on "the cloud", as in reality it's just "someone else's computer"

[@AmiPurple]

Awesome video! Always a pleasure to see your videos

[@seanscon]

peak german comedy

[@dardosordi]

I love every single one of your videos, but every Keithley repair brings extra joy to my day. Thanks Marco!

[@absurdengineering]

Your sense of humor is IMHO top-shelf. That makes me dignified audience, but probably not very smart 😂. I’m enjoying it all, for real. Keep it coming!

[@semillerimages]

Your videos are so fascinating - I have no use for any of this info, but I keep coming back to watch the news ones. Your voice overs are A+ too! I studied electrical engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (the electronics track back in 1989 - but I never did anything with it) Thanks much for all your efforts and keep up the humor!

[@Rick-O-Shay60]

Missed your grand electronic wizardry, along with that dry, quick, comedic wit which make your videos so entertaining to view! All the best to you friend.

[@user-pq5yb5hy9q]

Very impressive restoration work! Thank you! it was a pleasure to watch!

[@st3althyone]

Enjoyable as ever, my friend. Your content never fails to impress.

[@initialb123]

Thank you for taking the time to create and upload this. Wells done.

[@WillemvanLonden]

I have no idea what you are talking about, but I enjoy every minute of it.

[@muhdiversity7409]

Good job, Marco. Looking forward to the followup!

[@gsuberland]

Great repair job there! Glad to see it restored. That automatic supply rail selection circuit is really neat, too.

[@fullwaverecked]

Have been a humongous fan of your channel for years, but I must admit that I have not much of an idea of the specifics. I thoroughly enjoy the high tech cutting edge humor. Always a hoot! And educational... Cheers from Utah!

[@graealex]

That's the content I'm here for! Regarding the missing parts - I imagine someone combined two devices into one.

[@damustermann]

The HD Silkscreen looks amazing!

[@artursmihelsons415]

Excellent job and great repair video! 👍 This unit now is saved from scrap!

[@smoothjamie4046]

I used to use one of these in an old job. We were interested in measuring the volume/surface resistivity of certain polymers. They used to sell this with a test cell you could use to apply up to 1kv

[@onlyrgu]

I had the exact model till one week ago in my bench, last friday ai swapped it for 2420 for some extra four quadrant currents. These SMUs are the swiss knife of any electronics lab!

[@MCsCreations]

Awesome work, Marco! 😃 Looking forward to see the next video about it! Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@larbikamla8541]

This is awesome 👏. I like how u respect highly sophisticated instruments and how u trying to make it look as new.

[@clintfisher]

Your dedication is inspirational. Keep up the great work, and many thanks for all your fantastic videos!

[@Clark-Mills]

Nice work as usual. 23:34 Maybe a compression spring in there? Many thanks, you're a great presenter. Appreciated.

[@stanimir4197]

I also wondered why not spring load them - afraid to make a contact with the metal parts?

[@jakobhalskov]

Great work - made me smarter and shed of a few laughs on the journey! Thanks for putting so much work into these videos :)

[@trailblazingfive]

How does Siemens SolidEdge community edition fare against FreeCAD?

[@GraditelMacedonia]

Honestly, I'm enjoying to watch yours videos.

[@campbellmorrison8540]

Impressive work, equally impressive that you can purchase all those parts, one of the nice things about being in Europe I guess, unlike New Zealand where the freight would kill such endeavors.

[@OldePhart]

Great vid. Love the delivery.

[@CruzMonrreal]

So glad to finally see someone else use Solid Edge!

[@andymouse]

Great video and looking forward to part 2...cheers

[@video99couk]

Wow, that's getting deep into the 2400. Back in the day I picked up some 2400-LV units which had diodes missing to disable the high voltage output range for safety, as they had been used in a low voltage setting. I bought in and installed the SM diodes to bring the high voltages back, and simply blacked out the LV letters on the model number printed on the display cover. We used to rack mount them so I must have ditched hundreds of those feet, brand new.

[@drdiesel1]

Very well done Sir.

[@hightechstuff2]

Somehow, I knew you were going to go with red for the enable LED. Just to be different. The VFD on the 2400 is really fun with an AM radio near by. ;D

[@reps]

Mr. hightechstuff isn't it?! Long time no see 😄 At first I was thinking about one of those automatic color-cycling LEDs, but I could only find them with weeks of delivery time from china ...

[@stanimir4197]

one downside of the red color - most of the reduced color sensitivity is red/green and it affects ~9% of the male population, in that case red is not so noticeable. Flashy color cycling would be a better one.

[@lmamakos]

Not so many PPMs in this beast, but such an arduous journey they have been on. They need some campaign ribbons to commemorate all their lost component comrades.

[@SzymekCRX]

Wow, impressive and very relaxing to watch :) Greetings from Poland

[@themagnety]

You're the only person I know who uses Solid Edge besides my highschool robotics team who only uses it out of sponsorship obligations! Funny to see, it's very capable but not any better or worse than other popular cad suites, hope to see you find its quirks and features in the future

[@JohnUsp]

Awesome, thank you so much for this class.

[@jacquesb5248]

good repair job, liked the explanations!

[@808v1]

beautifully done!

[@appercumstock3017]

ThX Marco: brilliant as usual...

[@Gunhed507]

You, talking about caps makes me lose my last ppms! :D

[@mogoreanu]

Amazing. Good job. I feel smarter already.

[@YuriyKrivosheyev]

Thanx, I like your knowledge, passion and sense of humor ;)

[@Th3Mafia]

awesome video man! :o liquorish and roses, quintessential electronic components :D your simulations made me aware of a simple component that will improve my amateur basic boi circuit/device i made.

[@helderpereira6801]

Perfect as always!!! Thank you !!

[@IndependentNewsMedia]

Great video, keep up the good work 👍

[@Nono-hk3is]

I'm blown away once again.

[@SR-ml4dn]

Awesome repair work. Would love to see how to reconditioned a VFD display as you described and thanks for the interesting explanation for the driver output stage with gliding voltage enable more MOSFET's that design could be used in a power economical class AB amplifier.

[@roggi2620]

love your repair videos!!!!

[@TheSwiip1]

cool video, i used those to make sure grounding strap resistances where good, awesome devices :)

[@gregorymccoy6797]

Wonderful video. Love this type of content. I'm really upset that Ebay has devolved into a cash grab of rediculous proportions, too.

[@meh583]

Just wrote a driver for these. We tried using some 2400's once to dc bias a noise test once. What a nightmare. Ended up making a giant butterworth filter for it and still was crappy, while HP/aglient's e5270 from the same era was dead quite. But i guess for your Vt extraction or idvd curves it works fine.

[@johnfaustus1]

This guy is on a whole other level.

[@MarcelHuguenin]

Amazing video! Your dedication to the small details is outrageously wonderful, love it.

[@RaminCreate]

There we go, my favourite youtuber

[@bfx8185]

What a great job!

[@MrPhilip796]

Hows the JBC station holding up? Did you encounter any issues since the video never went public beyond Patreon?

[@reps]

Loving it! But I haven't heard anything back from the company yet ... I'll poke them gently 😶‍🌫

[@PhG1961]

Impressive equipment !

[@petepure3387]

Nicely Done... I only wish you'd make more videos Sir. All the best! :)

[@marwinthedja5450]

Oh well, I feel you... Transitioning from F360 to SE is definitely one thing I want to do before this year ends. I never even realized that SE offers a free version, till I read the article on HAD.

[@Edisson.]

That's what I call service, wonderful work, such a video is a pleasure to watch. SMUs are wonderful machines, I also owned one, that is, only until my amateur laboratory was robbed, just like you, I do not understand the prices on Ebay, due to the fact that I am from the Czech Republic and the exchange rate of our crown will multiply the price even more, I probably won't buy another one . Nice day 🙂 Tom

[@lucasng3330]

humor overload repair. Love you

[@adbethsing383]

SMUs are one of my favorite instruments ever. So useful for so many electronic devices.

[@maurosobreira8695]

Alchemist - Turning junk into beauty - And in a soothing way!

[@chicoroth8679]

very impressive, thank you!

[@BrilliantDesignOnline]

Simply incredible analysis and relating to the layman. If the ball bearings 'pop out', won't that be a short circuit issue?

[@Scrogan]

Can’t wait for the electrometer!

[@Cracks094]

I barely understood less than half of this video, but it was incredibly fascinating to watch!

[@t1d100]

Enjoyed it. Thank you.

[@teslakovalaborator]

Awesome repair, looking forward to the cal procedure. Recently got a Metra MT100 nixie voltmeter at a flea market, so may I join the ppm and test equipment hoarding community!

[@niccoswanson7342]

When is the next soldering station video coming out?

[@mikeley156]

Absolute class!

[@indian.techsupport]

love the reversing problem counter, lol, i would like a reversing problem counter for my life

[@MrPolluxxxx]

I'm an assistant in a research institute where there aren't many people really doing electronics. So I get free range in the electronics lab. I'm a big fan of the 2400 there. I used it to make automatic measurements on a homemade sensor. I also get access to a 3458a, but I don't use it that much. We don't have anything that talks GPIB and the extra digits dont carry any useful info. I'll probably take advantage of it when I really get into volt nuttery.

[@Drew-Dastardly]

AR488 - You have no excuse not to build one!

[@MrPolluxxxx]

@@Drew-Dastardly Looks nice! I'll probably build one when I need to use the SCPI on GPIB only instruments.

[@rokask]

I barely know enough to understand 60% of what this dude is explaining, but that's enough to understand the jokes. Omg... Next level stuff. Definitely not for all.

[@QsTechService1]

Nice rebuild ... Question how do you like the JBC tweezers I'm not too much of a fan of them ... Thinking about getting the JBC disordering Tool Have you had any problems with it ?

[@marianaldenhoevel7240]

Watching your content for witty entertainment as most of it is over my head. Thank you very much for that. I am intrigued by the idea of using PCBs, especially those aluminum-substrate ones, for labelling and signage. I feel this may be the time to finally install and play with KiCAD. Starting on non-functional parts does not seem as intimidating to me as making circuit boards that, you know, are supposed to actually work. Could you maybe share a simple design that demonstrates how to set up to specify areas exposing the different materials as you are hinting at starting around 21:50? Or explain it simply? Or point to a place that has information. Preferably suitable to infant-stage capabilities, although I am prepared to study :-).

[@jorikvarta81]

Awesome! Thanks bro!

[@adbethsing383]

Marco, so what was your general impression of Solid Edge compared to other MCAD software you have used? I am considering learning it but wondering about what is fastest to learn, today, for small components like this and others.

[@valerie_screws_around]

9:07 I literally laughed out loud, love your dry humor 😂

[@discobecky9179]

NEW MARCO

[@Tebbit123]

@Marco Reps where did you buy the ic micromanager ds1236 ?

[@theelmonk]

I wonder what failure caused it to be condemned in the first place ? It seems like most of the work was in repairing subsequent damage. Maybe those warm DACs, or the constant resetting.

[@turutzi]

Bist du dieses Jahr wieder auf der Makerfair in Hannover?