Hewlett-Packard HP-E3642A power supply onboarding

The HP-E3642A 8V/5A 20V/2.5A single-rail power supply

For some reason the e364x series of Hewlett-Packard/Agilent/Keysight power supplies are not very popular here in Japan and can be had for a song. No, not complaining at all! So here's a third one for the lab. Not the top of the line 4 amperes model which I already have) but the 2.5A junior version. Not the 1.5A baby version mind you, that it a bit too little amps for the bench space they take. With space at a premium in Japan I can understand why people concentrate on triple output models but these have the problem of only showing one output on the display at a time, so constant monitoring is not possible on all rails. I still need one (or two?) dual-rail models but those go for 10x the price so it will have to wait.

In the meantime let's get into this puppy. This will be a quick view inside only as the device works fine and I've covered the HP-E3641A and HP-E3644A before. Here's the top view and the bottom of the PCB, the latter featuring a rather long bodge wire:

Inside the HP-E3642A

Bottom side of the PCB with a large bodge (?) wire and a large-ish dust bunny.

The instrument is quite clean, as most instruments that I buy are, likely because Japan is a rather clean country. Mind you there are some horrors to purchase here too, but for some reason I tend to stay away from those :-) Still, the power supply does have its share of dust. It was sealed with an original Agilent calibration sticker so it must not have been calibrated or cleaned once in its entire life. The worst location was near the high-voltage section as expected: power switch and RIFA caps (gaaa!) were a bit 'fuzzy', as was the PCB in general:

Some non-catastrophic levels of dust, me likes.

Otherwise not a ton of dust in this unit.

Well, that's all folks. The RIFA caps will have to go of course, and nor Digikey nor Mouser have replacement ones with the same pitch, a pity. Will have to use smaller ones and play with the pins lengths. Oh well. When you pay $20 for this kind of instrument you can't really complain... :-)