Cory 111 Lab Equipment - How to Keep Things From Getting Broken

We've instituted a training tree, a student-to-student hand-down of knowledge (much like the training used in the Nanofab, which is an "each one, teach one" organization) in order to keep the equipment from getting broken. The culprit in equipment damage (i.e. the network analyzers, the ECal and the mechanical calibration standards) is bad cables and connectors which are out of spec. If the pin depth on an SMA cable is out of spec, it can damage the connector on the piece of equipment it's plugged into. Once the that equipment's connector is damaged, a good cable could be plugged into it and *it* can get damaged. It quickly spreads like a virus throughout the lab.

Since many people use the network analyzers in the Cory 111 Lab (research groups often need to "borrow time" on these machines), we all need to keep things from inadvertently getting broken.

Consequently, we have now instituted Super User training, where the root persons (myself, and Dr. Winthrop Williams who runs that lab) have trained 2 people, who each have trained 2 people, who will each train 2 people, and so on. Once you've gone through the training and become a Super User, you can refer back to this page in order to pass this training material on to your trainees. If you have suggestions about how to improve this material, please download the appropriate file, edit it and email it back to me (aflynn@eecs.berkeley.edu), and I will post it here. Also, Prof. Niknejad might post all of this to the EE142/242 Lab Resources portion of the class web page once he gets back from sabbatical, or before he next teaches the class. In the meantime, it's all here for those of us who need to use the equipment in Cory 111. Agilent has been very generous in donating so much expensive equipment. We want to make sure they know that we're now taking better care of it.

The Super User training is just on how not to break things. This information is given in these 3 links below. The first link is a set of slides which covers the material in the Super User training, while the second is additional information (an FAQ from Agilent on Connector Care). The third link below is the quiz you get at the end of your training, which you fill out on your own time (all the answers are in the first two links and/or the Super User went over it in your training). Once you finish filling in the (very simple) quiz, contact your trainer and arrange to meet for a checkoff, where you demo to the Super User the various things he/she asks you regarding how to use the equipment (without breaking it).

Learning More About How to Better Use the Equipment

Separately from the Super User training, there is some additional info in these links below, which I put together because I thought they might be generally useful to EE142/242 students. This could perhaps be a Lab0, teaching how to master certain tools which are used over and over in the later labs: how to calibrate the network analyzer, how to solder hard-to-solder small parts or parts that need to get soldered to ground planes which tend to act as large heat sinks. It also goes over one of the software tools (AWR's Microwave Office). The files Lab0.emp and Lab0.vin are Microwave Office files that go along with the a writeup for a possible new Lab0. The latex files are included in Lab0_LatexFiles.zip.

Revised Lab 1: Measuring Passive Components at High Frequencies

Finally, here is a possible re-write for Lab1 (which is what got me started on all of this ... I could never get Lab1 to work and it turned out to be because so many things were broken and/or just not possible to measure as described, with the particular boards we were given). This writeup includes steps to get those measurements, but via a different route.

Updated April 8, 2013
by Dr. Anita Flynn, Lustig Lab - RF Electronics for MRI.