Why is test equipment purposefully destroyed? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 09:46:38 am
content: Hey guys,Just got an ebay special, thought it would be a great deal. Turns out there are some missing parts inside and all the cables have been cut, with some components being ripped off of their boards.Any ideas on why this is done? I've seen other equipment in the past with their serial numbers and calibration stickers scratched out, but nothing this vicious.

author: capt bullshot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 10:05:02 am
content: One can imagine many reasons, e.g. if the equipment is written off or replaced by insurance, someone may want to be sure it is "really" defective.This one rather looks like someone salvaged a few components that were important to him and didn't care about the remaining carcass.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 10:15:54 am
content: There was a big problem in government facilities at one time, due to a bureaucratic system where you were given a yearly budget and if you didn't spend all of it, next year it would be reduced. Sometimes the stupidity of penpushers in making such rules, is hard to credit. The consequence was that departments which had underspent smashed some of their equipment at the end of each financial year, to ensure they spent their budget. The taxpayers money in action, no less. Going to a landfill near to you.

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 10:28:58 am
content: It all makes sense, but it's so wasteful. This gear costs a lot even used, discarding it like that is just stupid.I'd be pissed if I knew my money was wasted like this.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 11:23:53 am
content: There's been a few threads here about actual destruction, but that looks more like someone tried to steal the expensive parts hastily to sell separately.

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 12:23:35 pm
content: @amyk, very few useful parts are left, so yeah, someone took them out, but I don't think that was the main goal of cutting the cable (all of them are cut).I'm sad cuz I was hoping that I could at least get some decent parts out of it, if it wasn't repairable.

author: TheDane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 01:44:23 pm
content: It looks like the cables was cut in/around areas missing 'stuff'. (Otherwise it looks like a big box of almost nothing)- perhaps they were cut because the person ripping it was lazy? - some connectors can be real hard to get at, and why risk damage?The stuff taken could even have been re-used in new test equipment, so perhaps it was not done to prevent trade secrets leaks

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 01:48:52 pm
content: Why did they cut the cables?My opinion is, whoever wanted to salvage the expensive stuff, was too lazy to get the correct tool to properly disassemble the things. Far easier and quicker to just cut cables.Or, a thief in a hurry who didn't want to get caught.

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 02:18:36 pm
content: The cables alone were very high quality. 20+ rigid, semi rigid and flexible coax cables, all with 3.5mm connectors. Whoever got stuff from it, knew what he was taking, so he must have known the cables were also expensive.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 04:23:12 pm
content: The cables might be expensive but they RARELY fail so there's no market for used ones. The thief just wanted the expensive bits that they could sell and was too lazy to properly disconnect the cables and just cut them instead. Also I don't think this was a case of destroying just for the sake of destroying the item. Usually in that case they just take a hammer and smash the front panel without even opening it up. I once bought a large shipping container full of ex-US Army HP 71 calculators with military ROMS in them. The ROMS are plugins and can be removed with nothing more than your fingers, but somebody got the idea that they should demil the calculators by smashing the LCD displays with a hammer. All of the ROMs were still fully intact!

author: Macbeth
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 06:34:45 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on April 12, 2018, 10:20:33 amSurely if the equipment is still valuable after its useful life to your company, and after all government mandated depreciation is taken into account, you can still go and sell it on the open market and record whatever it sells for as 100% profit - which the IRS then get to tax?

author: CopperCone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 07:57:34 pm
content: to keep the common man uneducated and poor

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 09:03:34 pm
content: Quote from: Macbeth on April 12, 2018, 06:34:45 pmMost big companies make their money in manufacturing and they're not interested in making nickels and dimes selling used test equipment. They also have to worry about lawsuits and other nonsense from people that don't know how to properly use TE and that cause a problem that results in legal action. In short, most big companies would, and DO, give the TE to scrappers rather than deal with the surplus market. Dealing with an angry buyer that received a looted piece of gear like this is exactly the kind of thing that they don't want to have to deal with.

author: High_vacuum_house
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 09:11:53 pm
content: It happened a lot when I was working for Perkins engines in Peterborough. The development department would destroy perfectly good (if a little old) test equipment. I tried to get my hands on a few bits but was told that they were liable if anyone was injured if plugged in and got a belt off it. The other reason they claimed is that it could fall into the hands of their competitors and used against them commercially. This reason was utter pants if anyone took the time to look at what was being disposed of ( old 90's era analogue oscilloscopes, power supplies and so on)I think they just couldn't be bothered with it and easier to dump it than to sell it to us in house. I asked about donations to a local charity but all fell on deaf ears..Christopher Capener

author: Macbeth
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 09:57:57 pm
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on April 12, 2018, 09:03:34 pmOk, so nothing to do with tax evasion after all. Just lazy shiny arsed pen pushers a few steps removed from the techs or engineers ticking a box...ETA: In my experience they actually PAY the scrappers to take the highly valuable stuff away.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 10:10:33 pm
content: Manufacturers also enforce scraping of perfectly good test equipment.Tektronix have had trade-in schemes were you trade in your oldworkingscope for a new Tek model.e.g. this promotionhttps://assets.tequipment.net/assets/1/26/Documents/LeCroy/202/202_doc_1.pdfWhat did they do with all those traded-in working scopes? They scrapped thempresumably so they don't flood the 2nd hand market and take away sales of new Tek scopes.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2018, 11:28:10 pm
content: One of the high end audio mixer manufacturers had a promotion where you got a GOOD discount for showing your old desk being creatively destroyed, we trashed a big old yamaha console out of a 5th story window followed by running the remains over with a forklift.The fact we bought the yamaha as a junker because we paid less for it then the discount was worth was a detail that did not stop the local youth group getting on our arse for trashing something they could have used (Actually it would have been pure frustration, NOTHING on that thing worked reliably).It actually looks to me like that trashed R&S? VNA? Still has most of the RF doings present, I don't see many locations where things have clearly been removed at least from the underside. Lots of cut hardline and semi rigid, but I see two detector bridges, a couple of what look like sampling heads, maybe some RF changeover gear and possibly a couple of possible mixers, Unless there are a pile of cards missing from the other side of the chassis it looks to me like someone just cut a load of cable?Are the digital bits on the other side of the chassis (and the hard drive) present?Sometimes people do a really poor job of of putting things beyond the use of a decent hacker.Regards, Dan.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2018, 02:04:09 am
content: Jadew, that's a very sad sight. I feel for you.The argument from some: "cables cut by a thief hurriedly taking modules' is invalid. There are actually very few (if any) modules missing in that photo. Look for empty mount screw holes - there are almost none. The only modules missing are a few inline attenuators, filters, circulators, etc. There ARE cut ribbon cables though, and it's more trouble to cut a ribbon cable than to unplug it. Meanwhile, all the expensive-looking gold-plated blocks are still there? Really?That swirl of hardline at lower left is also revealing - someone grabbed them with pliers, and wound them around and around.This was deliberate destruction.The reason so many people find this hard to grasp, is they can't imagine anyone having a motive to 'just destroy it.'The closest they can come to an understanding is the beancounter excuse - accounting practices require total destruction of items that have been depreciated to zero, otherwise it calls the logic of the accounts into question.But that's false too. That insane 'logic' is a _symptom_ not a cause.The real primary cause: There is a class of people, who as a group carry a deep hostility towards the culture and progress of civilization, because all such advances that are not _theirs_, contradict foundational elements of their worldview.CopperCone is exactly right, but that too is a symptom not the primary cause.For them, anything they can do to undermine human progress is what they will choose to do. This manifests in many ways. Jadew, you unfortunately bought a small example.Edit: An ealier thread:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/i-died-a-little-inside-today/

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2018, 04:40:40 am
content: Exact same shit as Cash for Clunkers...PURE GREEDY EVILThis should be stopped before it reaches the point where..."That factory over there has been sitting unused for a year, and we still own it!""What do you want us to do about it!""DYNAMITE IT NOW SO THEY GIVE US MORE MONEY!!!""But sir, why don't we just sell-"*KABOOM*"Oh..."

author: Harb
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2018, 05:03:02 am
content: I know of a place here in Sydney that is under contract to destroy government equipment........I tried everything to get them to make an exception, but they said it simply wasn't worth the risk to sell anything and loose their contract and probably also get sued.......its crying shame to watch what gets destroyed........I have seen Anything from Highend test gear to microwave links get crushed....nobody there has any idea what they are crushing and don't care....to them is all just "Computer Stuff"The trend these days is things get leased and then recovered at the leases end, service contracts and the like......there is no longer a good reliable source for out of lease test gear here anymore.

author: Harb
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2018, 05:05:12 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 12, 2018, 10:10:33 pmSony Broadcast did the same......and were happy to tell you that they didn't want the tradin's on the second hand market.......

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2018, 01:57:47 pm
content: There are a couple of screw holes, but I don't know what was there.Yes, all the attenuators, mixers, filters were gone. All I could recover that could be useful were two 1-40 GHz directional couplers and two bias tees.There are also two 40 GHz step attenuators, but with the ribbon cable cut and two k-band detectors (I think). All the boards on the other side were in place, but one of them had components pulled off (with a screw driver or something).fixing it is out of the question, considering I don't know what's missing and all the high quality cables are cut, and I don't think I'll recover what I paid for it (even if I didn't pay too much), because I don't think there are a lot of people in need of these assemblies.

author: basinstreetdesign
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2018, 04:50:46 am
content: After 9/11, the American gov, and by extension the CDN gov decreed that all government surplus gear would be destroyed to make sure it never found its way into enemy hands. Enemies such as al qaeda, russia, etc. The salvage and used gear dealers here were crying the blues for years because they found it so hard to get inventory. It was unusual to see anything newer than 1970s at those places.

author: MadTux
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2018, 12:03:06 pm
content: Test gear is probably just too small and reliable for efficient export restrictions. It fits inside a parcel and usually works without much trouble/supply of replacement parts, if you're skilled and careful. Once it's somewhere, it will keep working as long as noone fries it. Also quite useless on it's own, if there are no production capabilities or fighters/submarines/missiles.... that need service. IMO, export restriction work much better on consumables like machine or engine parts since they need regular replacement/supply.BTW was that a Rhode Schwarz ZVM 10MHz-20GHz VNA?That sucks. I'd at least try to get a full refund and send it back to the seller, if necessary. Based on the prices (even for trashed ones on ebay), a repair certainly won't be cheap. Selling it for parts might also be an option, but since the best parts (assuming the ripper knew what he was doing) are gone, it might take a long time.

author: jadew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 14, 2018, 06:09:13 pm
content: It was a 10 MHz - 40 GHz ZVK.I got it cheap and I kinda expected something to be terribly wrong with it, but tbh, I didn't expect this. Yeah, it's going to be impossible to source the missing parts and I can't find a service manual to even know which parts those are.I'm planning to sell the individual parts, but I don't know what to ask for the various assemblies (that are still intact), since it's not the kind of thing that usually ends up on ebay.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2018, 06:43:51 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 12, 2018, 10:10:33 pmI have a pair of Tektronix oscilloscopes with sales invoices which were sold through the Tektronix company store. They did this with surplus internally used equipment and newly produced equipment which had gone through destructive testing but survived. At some point they stopped this practice and just destroyed everything because too much of it was showing up on the grey market or perhaps because employee goodwill no longer mattered.

author: Twoflower
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2018, 06:48:19 pm
content: It could also be that the device underlies export restrictions. To prevent that the equipment can be used by thebad guysit has to be destroyed beyond repair if you get it out of your hands.

author: JacobPilsen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2018, 07:01:35 pm
content: The Spice Must Flow...

author: mmagin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 15, 2018, 07:38:33 pm
content: Quote from: basinstreetdesign on April 14, 2018, 04:50:46 amNow if only they'd destroy actual weapons before giving them to supposed allies who may turn on us in a couple decades.