Hold on to your test instruments

We're an EMS so most of our gear is owned by the customer and tied to a specific project. The few pieces that we own are only of interest to about three of us, so we pretty much know where everything is and who needs it next.

Logic thinking and morality can often go oppositely...
Many years ago, when the IGBT has not yet been invented, my colleague had written an inscription "Our laboratory" on the cover of our samiconductor's catalogue.
That's a good idea, I told to myself.
When we then got a brand new scope, I even improved this idea by fine-scratching "Our laboratory" onto heads of accessory coaxial cables. In some time, one of these cables disappeared.
When I visited later an another laboratory, I found there the missing cable and told about it to head of that laboratory. He looked at me in an ugly way, as I was one-generation younger; and said severely "It is my cable!". I pointed then onto hardly-visible, yet clear scratching and he was so surprized, that he gave up continuing this bad-theater-performance.
Now I think, that his immoral logic of thinking was that about a cable, not carrying any original number or other sign; can anybody tell anything. Perhaps if his abilities were on the level of intelligence-employees -- he could continue the theater by claiming that "Our laboratory" means "his laboratory"...

My buddies at Linear Technology tell me the only sign that is respected is "Personal Property". Heck those wild folks will take it off the bench in the middle of a test if it is a company scope. My solution was to become a consultant. Then I have a lab to myself that no one else can use. Getting the test equipment cheap on eBay and at swap meets was a small price to pay to insure that the stuff would stay on my bench.

Thanks for the comments. I'd like to learn something about what you do. Perhaps you can be the subject of a Test Voices Q&A or you'd like to contribute a test idea. Contact me at m.rowe@tmworld.com. Thanks.

There are two issues you addressed in this discussion. The first pertains to equipment security. I haven't seen many labs that lock down their equipment with locks yet. For companies with a large amount of equipment distributed among many labs, floors and buildings Contech Marketing offers an RFID asset tracking system. We select tags that fit Scopes, Test Equipment, Probes, Power meter heads, machines, computers and even cables. We offer a Monitoring Module that uses fixed RFID readers to provide real-time asset tracking to a database that is updated in real-time and can be monitored via a web page with secure access. We can even tell you which employee walked off with the asset and where in the facility he left it. Another module uses handheld RFID readers to automate physical asset inventory using the same database.
The second issue is remote control via Ethernet or LXI. With the advent of the latest LXI standards, it is very easy and simple to use a web interface to monitor and operate Test Equipment. I have customers that monitor long term environmental test from home and even get email alerts to their PDA/Phones on the status of their UUT's and the test progress or alarms.

I had a TEK 2440 some years ago that would routinely dissappear. Before I went on vacation I found that I could put it in a diagnostics mode and make it appear as if the internal memory was damaged. If someone nabbed it, they thought they broke it and it got put back on my bench. One time someone decided to send it to be repaired and was telling me about it before they sent it. That is when that person got shown how to get it out of the diagnostic mode.
It never got taken after I started doing that.

A lot of our instruments are pretty stationary, scopes, logic analyzers but what absolutely causes a war are the probes and the probe pieces and the Tek vs Agilent. I've seen many hours even days, wasted by guys looking for suitable probes.

I find that if I use the older test equipment that does not have USB or LAN connection, the young engineers refuse to use it. Even if it has a floppy or RS232. As you might guess I have more test equipment on my bench than the other engineers, out of their choice.

In our lab the rule is that unused equipment is up for grabs. When I know I will need a piece of test equipment I turn it on and connect it up to a dummy circuit to make it look like it's in use. I like Boogleman's "broken" sign technique though, brilliant.

I once had a small but cosltly piece of test equipment vanish. Everyone denied knowledge of what had happened. However, a few weeks later, I did get the instrument back. Someone brought it into my office, angrily demanding that I repair it at once after they had broken it.

An associate has the following notice taped over his setup:
"Note that Texas law allows the use of lethal force to protect property"
Might not work in all parts of the country, though.

I put a label on equipment I don't want to disappear with the word BAD, BROKEN, INOP, etc and they are left alone.

I've made a fair number of my own test instruments and I've 'prevented theft' by making 2-3 copies of each one and lending out the duplicates...