drive – Page 2 – Experimental Engineering

Posted on March 12, 2011September 17, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

Brother P-Touch 80 Label Maker

Here is a label maker, bought on offer at Maplin Electronics. Full Qwerty keyboard with 1 line dot matrix LCD display visible here. Power is 4 AAA cells or a 6v DC Adaptor.

Rear cover removed. Battery compartment is on the left hand side, space for the tape cartridge on the right. Ribbon cable leading to the thermal print head is on the far right, with rubber tape drive roller.

PCB under the top cover with the main CPU, a MN101C77CBM from Panasonic. This CPU features 48K Mask ROM & 3K of RAM. Max clock frequency is 20MHz. 32kHz clock crystal visible underneath a Rohm BA6220 Electronic speed controller IC.
This is used to drive the printer motor at a constant accurate speed, to feed the tape past the thermal head. Miniature potentiometer adjusts speed.
Ribbon cable at the bottom of the board connects to the print head, various wiring at the left connects to the battery & DC Jack.

Printer drive mechanism. Small DC motor drives the pinch roller though a gear train. DC Jack & reverse polarity protection diode is on the right.
This unit uses a centre negative DC jack, which is unusual.

Thermal tape cartridge, black text on white background.

Posted on March 2, 2011February 10, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

USB-IDE/SATA Adaptor

This is a device to use an IDE or SATA interface drive via a USB connection. Here is the front of the device, IDE interface at the bottom, 2.5″ form factor.

PCB removed from the casing. USB cable exits the top, 12v DC power jack to the left.
SATA interface below the DC Jack.
Molex connector below SATA is the power output for the drive in use. This unit has a built in 5v regulator.

Bottom of the PCB showing the interface IC.

Adaptor to plug into the 44-pin 2.5″ form factor IDE interface on the adaptor, converts to standard 40-pin 3.5″ IDE.

Power pigtail with standard Molex & SATA power plugs.

Posted on February 28, 2011February 10, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

Sanyo Talkbook VAS

Here is a Sanyo tape recorder, with built in voice activation. Takes standard audio cassettes.
Here visible is the speaker on the left, microphone is on the right of the tape window. The tape counter is at the top.

Back cover removed from the unit, showing the PCB & the connections. The IC is the controller/amplifier.

Top of the PCB, control switches, volume potentiometer & microphone/headphone sockets on the right. DC power jack top left. Switch bottom centre senses what mode the tape drive is in.

Rear of the tape deck, main drive motor is bottom right, driving the capstan through a drive belt. This drives the tape spools through a series of gears & clutches. Belt going to top left drives the tape counter.

Front of the tape drive. Read/write head is top centre. Blue head is bulk erase head used during recording.

Main speaker. 8Ω 0.25W.

Simple mechanical tape counter.

Posted on February 16, 2011February 10, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

IDE Zip Drive

An old IDE interface Zip drive. This fits in a standard 3.5″ bay.

Top cover removed from the drive, IDE & power interfaces at the top, in centre is the eject solenoid assembly & the head assembly. Bottom is the spindle drive motor.

Head assembly with the top magnet removed. Voice coil is on the left, with the head preamp IC next to it. Head chips are on the end of the arm inside the parking sleeve on the right. Blue lever is the head lock.

Controller PCB removed from the casing.

Spindle motor. This is a 3-phase DC brushless type motor. Magnetic ring on the top engages with the hub of the Zip disk when insterted into the drive.

Magnets that interact with the voice coil on the head assembly.

Head armature assembly removed from the drive. The arm is supported by a pair of linear bearings & a stainless steel rod.

Posted on February 14, 2011February 10, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

Belling Microwave

Here is a cheap no frills microwave oven, which died after a few weeks of normal use.

Cover removed, showing the internals. Front of the microwave is on the left.

Closeup of the timer unit. Cheap & nasty.

Magnetron removed from the oven. Antenna is on the top, cooling fins visible in the center. White conector at the bottom is the filament terminals.

Chokes on the magnetron’s filament connections. These prevent microwave energy from feeding back into the electronics bay through the connections.

Magnetron cooling fins, tube & magnets removed from the frame.

Bare magnetron tube.

This PCB does some rudimentary power conditioning, power resistors are in series with the live feed to the power trasformer, to prevent huge power up surge. When the transformer energizes the relay, which is in parallel with the resistors, switches them out a fraction of a second after, providing full power to the transformer.
Standard RFI choke & capacitor at the top of the board, with the input resistor.

Power transformer to supply the magnetron with high voltage.
Power output is ~2kV at ~0.5A. Pair of spade terminals are the low voltage filament winding.

HV Capacitor. This along with the diode form a voltage doubler, to provide the magnetron with ~4kV DC.

HV diode stack.

Internals of the HV fuse. Rated for ~0.75A at 5kV. The fuse element is barely visible attached to the end of the spring. Connects between the transformer & the capacitor.

Cooling fan for the magnetron. Drive is cheap shaded pole motor.

Fan motor. Basic 240v shaded pole induction type.

Posted on February 12, 2011February 10, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

iPod

Old iPod with damaged screen. Here is the front with the Click Wheel.

Cover removed from the back, here the HDD is the biggest visible part.

Back cover removed from the unit, here is the back of the screen & the main PCB.

Back cover with the battery & headphone jack PCB.

Closeup of the Li-Ion battery.

Front removed from the unit, the touch sensitive Click Wheel PCB is folded away from the mainboard here.

Tactile switches underneath the Click Wheel.

1.8″ hard drive. Toshiba MK3008GAL.

Posted on January 26, 2011 by The Engineer — 4 Comments

Audi TT Roof Hydraulics

This is the hydraulic system from an Audi TT that would power the soft top. Here is the hydraulic pump unit. Oil Tank is on the left. Power is 12v DC at ~20A

The pair of hydraulic cylinders that attached to the roof mechanism.

One of the cylinders has a limit switch built in. The brass bolt coming out of the side of the head is one contact. The other contact is the cylinder body.

Marking on the hoses. This is Parker Polyflex hydraulic hose. 1/8″ ID.

Drive motor for the hydraulic pump. Standard DC permanent magnet motor.

Motor power terminals & suppression capacitors. As the reversing relays actually short the motor out when de-energized, there is a lot of arcing at the brushes without some suppression.

Reversing relay stack. Each relay is a SPDT configuration. The pair are arranged as a DPDT bank to reverse the motor, depending on which relay is energized.

Detail of the oil tank showing the level markings.

Solenoid valve on top of the unit. This valve provides full pump pressure to the cylinders when energized.

Posted on January 5, 2011January 4, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

Bandridge VA-315

This is a small audio mixer, marketed for camcorder audio dubbing.

I/O Panel on the rear of the unit. Contains a small preamp, but will not drive speakers directly. Power is a 9v battery or plugpack.

Front of the PCB removed from the case. Mic preamp bottom right corner. Each channel has it’s own Preamp IC between the faders.

Rear of the PCB.

Posted on January 4, 2011January 3, 2011 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

PSP Slim

Here is a PSP Slim that recently died.

For those that are interested, here is the ID label, this is a PSP-2003.

Here the front of the unit has been removed, showing the first internal components.

Here is the unit with the LCD removed, here the mainboard is partially visible.

Left pad unit removed from the PSP, with the left speaker & the memory stick slot cover.

Rear of the left pad assembly, showing the speaker.

Joypad removed from the casing. Resistive unit.

Headphone/data board removed from the casing. This also has TV-Out on the PSP-200x series.

Mainboard removed. Main CPU is at the top. Sockets around the bottom connect to the UMD drive & UMD Drive.

Closeup of the main chipset. CPU is the top IC.

Rear of the mainboard, Memory Stick socket on the right.

Closeup of the WiFi chipset & the charging power socket on the right.

Closeup of the bettery connector & the charge controller IC.

UMD Drive removed from the rear of the casing. This is a miniature DVD style drive, using a 635nm visible red laser.

Rear of the UMD drive, showing the laser sled & drive motors. Both the spindle motor & the sled motor are 3-phase brushless type. The laser diode/photodiode array is at the top of the laser sled.

Posted on October 14, 2010 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

Bosch GSR 14.4v Pro Drill-Driver

Here is a Bosch 14.4v Professional cordless drill/driver, recovered from a skip!
It was thrown away due to a gearbox fault, which was easy to rectify.

Here is the drill with the side cover removed, showing it’s internal parts. The speed controller is below the motor & gearbox here. The unit at the top consists of a 12v DC motor, coupled to a 4-stage epicyclic gearbox unit, from which can be selected 2 different ratios, by way of the lever in the centre of the box. This disables one of the gear stages. There is a torque control clutch at the chuck end of the gearbox, this was faulty when found.

Here is the drive motor disconnected from the gearbox, having a bayonet fitting on the drive end.

This is the primary drive gear of the motor, which connects with the gearbox.

The motor is cooled by this fan inside next to the commutator, drawing air over the windings.

This is the gearbox partially disassembled, showing the 1st & second stages of the geartrain. The second stage provides the 2 different drive ratios by having the annulus slide over the entire gearset, disabling it entirely, in high gear. The annulus gears are a potential weak point in this gearbox, as they are made from plastic, with all other gears being made of steel.

Here is the charging unit for the Ni-Cd battery packs supplied with the drill. The only indicator is the LED shown here on the front of the unit, which flashes while charging, & comes on solid when charging is complete. Charge termination is by way of temperature monitoring.

Here the bottom of the charger has been removed, showing the internal parts. An 18v transformer supplies power to the charger PCB on the left.

This is the charger PCB, with a ST Microelectronics controller IC marked 6HKB07501758. I cannot find any information about this chip.

Here is a battery pack with the top removed, showing the cells.

This is the temperature sensor embedded inside the battery pack that is used by the charger to determine when charging is complete.

Posted on September 23, 2010 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

USB Flash Drive

Here is a cheap chinese made flash drive given out for free by Westlaw UK. Capacity 512MB

Here is the PCB removed from the casing, USB connector on the left, followed by the clock crystal for the flash controller, a CBM2092, which is a Chipsbank part. 512MB flash memory IC, unknown maker. Access LED on far right of the board.

Posted on August 5, 2010 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

HP Photosmart 375

This is a HP PhotoSmart 375 portable photo printer. With built in card reader, screen & PictBridge.
Top of the printer showing the UI Buttons & Screen.

Front of the unit, card reader slots at the top, Pictbridge USB connector at top left. Paper out slot at bottom. Cartridge door is on the right.

Here the cartridge door is open. Takes HP 95 Tri-Colour Inkjet Cartridge.

Battery compartment on the bottom of the unit. A Li-Ion battery pack can be installed here for mobile photo printing.

Specifications label.

Power adaptor & USB connection for PC use.

Rear door opened. Showing the paper feed tray.

Rear door has been removed in this shot. Paper feed roller & platen roller can be seen here.

Paper holder attached to rear door.

Bottom of the top cover, with connections for the buttons & LCD panel.

This is the main PCB of the unit. Controls all aspects of the printer. CPU in center, card reader sockets are along bottom edge. various support circuitry surrounds the CPU.

Rear shell has been removed here. Showing the main frame & the carriage drive motor on the left.

Closeup of the carriage drive motor & timing belt system. All the motors in this printer are DC servo motors, not steppers.

Main drive motor, feeds paper, drives rollers, operates cleaning mechanism for the inkjets.

Mainshaft encoder. Main drive motor is bottom right hand side with timing belt drive.

Closeup of the CPU. This is a Phillips ARM chip, unknown spec.

Detail of the card reader sockets, this unit takes all current types of Flash memory card.

HP 95 Tri-color Inkjet Print Cartridge

Posted on July 29, 2010August 1, 2010 by The Engineer — Leave a comment

Western Digital 160GB 2.5″ HDD

This is a Western Digital drive recently removed from my laptop when it died of a severe head crash.
Top of drive can be seen here.

Here the cover has been removed from the drive, showing the platter, head arm & magnet. Yellow piece top left is head parking ramp.

The head assembly of the drive is shown here. The head itself is on the left hand end of the arm in the plastic parking ramp. The other end of the arm holds the voice coil part of the head motor, surrounded by the magnet.

Bottom of drive, with controller PCB. SATA interface socket at bottom.

PCB removed from bottom of drive. Spindle motor connections & connections to the head unit can be seen on the bottom of the drive unit.

Controller PCB. Supports the cache, interface & motor controller ICs.

Closeup of the motor driver IC, this controls the speed of the spindle motor precisely to 5,400RPM. Also controls the voice coil motor controlling the position of the head arm on the platters.

Interface IC closeup. This IC receives signals from the head assembly & processes them for transmission to the SATA bus. Also holds drive firmware, controls the Motor driver IC & all other functions of the drive.

Cache Memory IC.