Allentown Electronics Tech Students Learn to use 3 Important Tools

January 27, 2020
An electronics tech performs calculations using a calculator and readings from a multi-tester.

An electronics tech performs a calculation using readings from a portable multi-meter and a hand-held calculator. These are some of the common tools for an electronics technician.

An electronics tech trainee at the Allentown campus tests a circuit board.

An electronics tech trainee at Allentown’s electronic engineering technician spends some time mapping a circuit board – the values displayed by his multi-meter will help him find a damaged circuit pathway.

An Allentown electronics tech student prepares a circuit board for soldering.

An electronics tech student in the electronics engineering technician program prepares to solder a circuit board.

An electronics student adjusts an oscilloscope to measure voltage change in a circuit.

The Oscilloscope – before digital displays like the one above, the oscilloscope used a cathode-ray tube to graphically display signal voltages on a two-dimensional plotting field. The tool’s usefulness comes into play when it is used for continuous monitoring of a signal.

Allentown students who are earning their associates degree in the specialized technology program learn to use various tools of the trade. The students pictured in each slide are shown learning to use three devices that are considered to be indispensable for the electronics tech to perform troubleshooting and repair duties.

The Oscilloscope1 is an age-old standard. First marketed by General Radio in the 1930s as a cathode-ray display, the venerable device continues on in modern digital form as the best way for electronics students to measure and monitor signal voltage changes in an operating circuit.

This differs from both the second device, the multi-meter, which measures voltage, current and resistance and displays in numerical readouts, as well as the third device which is the soldering iron.  The soldering iron is a simple hand-held pinpoint heat source that supplies the required temperature to melt solder and join two separate electrical components. All three are important for the electronics tech to master. These will be the tools of their trade.

1Wikipedia, on the Internet at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope, This page was last edited on 19 December 2019, at 02:21 (UTC). Accessed on January 21, 2020.

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  • Electronics,
  • electronics engineering technology,
  • Electronics tech