What the hell, what is this big machine for?

It makes the magic smoke needed for transistors. Mainly for doping wafers to create various types of semiconductor junctions, isolation and deep well charge regions.


https://www.semanticscholar.org/pap...tyre/57555e1bb0efdbb829a2ab2d419843c4914d6e29

 

It makes the magic smoke needed for transistors. Mainly for doping wafers to create various types of semiconductor junctions, isolation and deep well charge regions.
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https://www.semanticscholar.org/pap...tyre/57555e1bb0efdbb829a2ab2d419843c4914d6e29

You certainly have dealt with leading edge technology over your career, something very few people achieve in their lifetime.

 

You certainly have dealt with leading edge technology over your career, something very few people achieve in their lifetime.

Hardly, the core technology is old stuff from the 90's. What's new is the need to use it in current commodity devices like 8-bit PIC controllers. One of my jobs was to design and build updates to keep them running after 20+ years of 24/7 operation and to train the next generation to take over.

 

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People have been telling me to clean up my electronics room. What are your opinions as more experienced electrical engineers than me?

I really hope this is the case.

Does not look very messy to me.

 

Hardly, the core technology is old stuff from the 90's. What's new is the need to use it in current commodity devices like 8-bit PIC controllers. One of my jobs was to design and build updates to keep them running after 20+ years of 24/7 operation and to train the next generation to take over.
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Your lab is quite complete, but sorely lacking a vital piece of equipment.....
I don't see a coffee or tea mug anywhere. Or at the very least a mate gourd.
Nothing beats the laboratory smell of recently brewed coffee, with the smell of rosin flux evaporating from the tip of a soldering iron. Then you know the people are actually working!!

SIDENOTE: I've been told by VERY old engineers, back when cigarette smoking indoors was a perfectly acceptable behavior, that the smell of tobacco also permeated labs.

EDIT: I never, never, ever place any liquid on the workbench where electrical equipment is. I've a small table on my back where I place the cup.

 

Nothing beats the laboratory smell of recently brewed day old coffee...

FIFY.

 

that the smell of tobacco also permeated labs.

And everything was coated with a yellow brownish cigarette tar stain... Even inside the instruments! Desktop computers quickly lost their Beige colorization and there were burn marks everywhere. I do regularly mop up and wipe down most of the coffee spills and stains.

 

And everything was coated with a yellow brownish cigarette tar stain... Even inside the instruments! Desktop computers quickly lost their Beige colorization and there were burn marks everywhere. I do regularly mop up and wipe down most of the coffee spills and stains.

In the 80s I worked in a used audio store selling and repairing various gear. One of the main things we had to do was clean off cigarette residue. It was unpleasant but the equipment looked so much better afterwards.

 

In the 80s I worked in a used audio store selling and repairing various gear. One of the main things we had to do was clean off cigarette residue. It was unpleasant but the equipment looked so much better afterwards.

Cigarette residue I could handle, it was the bugs (dead and alive) inside that was really unpleasant.

 

Or at the very least a mate gourd.

Thanks for the name in english, I thought it was just the south of Brazil and some countries in Latin America that drank mate. Here we call it "chimarrão". And the mate gourd we call "cuia", which when foreigners come not a single soul knows the translation and we assume you can't translate that. So thanks for letting me know.

 

Your lab is quite complete, but sorely lacking a vital piece of equipment.....
I don't see a coffee or tea mug anywhere. Or at the very least a mate gourd.
Nothing beats the laboratory smell of recently brewed coffee, with the smell of rosin flux evaporating from the tip of a soldering iron. Then you know the people are actually working!!

SIDENOTE: I've been told by VERY old engineers, back when cigarette smoking indoors was a perfectly acceptable behavior, that the smell of tobacco also permeated labs.

EDIT: I never, never, ever place any liquid on the workbench where electrical equipment is. I've a small table on my back where I place the cup.

There was a break room for coffee or tea outside the space.


Technically most of the equipment shops were cleanroom so we could move equipment to and from the fab without wiping down everything. When I worked for the Japanese they had two indoor smoking rooms in the office side of the fab.

 

In the 80s I worked in a used audio store selling and repairing various gear. One of the main things we had to do was clean off cigarette residue. It was unpleasant but the equipment looked so much better afterwards.

The strangest I saw was a CATV receiver returned for repair UNDER FACTORY WARRANTY.
Upon inspection, a pair of bullet holes were found, with one of the bullet fragments still attached to a large electrolytic capacitor.