Teardown – Page 17 – Making Studio

Motion-Activated Solar Power LED light teardown

Hi， I’m Jiani, I tear down a LED light yesterday, it’s really interesting.

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Solar panel is a important part for this product, it turns solar to energy to support the light to work. A solar panel help LED light work outside become possible without charging function. And it is also a more environmental protection way because the batteray in it can be reused.

The motion sensitive part is a very useful part, the light can change it’s degree of luminescence depends on the motion so that it can prevent waste of some energy instead of light all the time.

by Jiani Lin

Sep 14,2016

Teardown：A calculator

#Jingting He

This is a calculator. Is there anyone doesn’t know what is a calculator? No? Ok, let’s tear down it!

First, I tried to twist off the screws and tear down its plastic back cover. I used a screwdriver and my hands to do that. Let’s see what’s in it.

LCD. There will be some pattern on it while you press.

Battery.

Wire, which connect the processor and the battery.

Keyboard. I guess the black piece under every button can be a resistance. When you press different buttons, the touch-sensitive key pad will form different circuits. Therefore we can track the data.

A “solar panel”, actually is a plastic ornament. At first I guessed it to be a solar panel, but there’s no wire connected to that. So it may just be a fake one. (Aha, for the calculator I bought was the cheapest one!)

Processor. I guess there’s something in it by looking at the shape.

After burning the black part, I can easily use a knife to cut it and found a chip in it! (Awesome!)

Some small Parts. Sponge for support and some screws.

A family portrait ^_^

Materials & Manufacture Process:

Cover: ABS plastic/injection molduled

Button: ABS plastic/injection molduled

Printed circuit board: prepreg, copper/Patch etching resist

Nail: stainless steel/thread rolling

LCD screeen: liquid crystal/multiple process

Wire: plastic, copper, aluminum / injection mulduled

Battery: Zinc, Manganese, stainless steel, nylon/Multiple process

As for the most interesting part, the first one I think is the fake solar panel. I laughed for a long time, as the way to save manufacturing cost is so smart. Actually I’ve never thought about that there is a solar panel in a calculator, but a battery, as a battery is enough for using.

The printed circuit board is also interesting. It is so thin, which subverted the image of printed circuit board in my heart. I suppose the reason may also be saving cost.

And at last, I think I should tell you the price of my calculator. ＄1.99 ^_^

Tear Down – Portable Charger

Pocket Juice 2200mAh Portible Battery Charger

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The product has a very simple assemply consisting of:

Injection moulded casing and power button
Transparent plastic LED difuser
Foam sepperator
Small Philips cross head screws
3.7V 8.14Wh lithium cell
Printed circuit board
Insulated wire

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The circuitboard contains several components including:

1x blue LED
4x surface-mount blue LED
1x 2R2 3.7 to 5v transformer
1x short USB felmale connector
1x micro USB connector
1x surface mount push button
6x surface mount capacitors
5x surface mount resistors
1x Honeywell / Microswitch 1PB315
1x One Cell Lithium-ion/Polymer Battery Protection IC DW01A
1x Dual-Channel Power Distribution Switch B2025

Designers Intensions

The form of this products implies that the product contains 2 lithium cells but only contains one. This could have been a technique to make the product appear as if it was of a higher capacity. However the extra space is still used to hold a small circuitboard.

The product has a matte coating on the ABS casing. I was not able to workout how this finish was achieved but it was likely done to cheaply give the product the appearance of higher quality.

Disassembly Process

The product contains no external screws or mounts and tools will be required for disassembly: 1x Prying Tool and 1x Small Phillips Cross Screwdriver
The main body of the product is held together with moulded clips and can be separated with the prying tool.
The circuit board is held to the casing with 2 small Philips cross head screws.
The circuit board can be pried from the casing with the prying tool.
A small piece of adhesive tape holds the battery in place which can be removed with the prying tool.
A small piece of padding which sat between the circuit board and casing is attached with mild adhesive.
The battery power light and power button is plastic welded to the casing and can be separated with the prying tool.

Teardown: Nintendo Entertainment System

For our first project I decided to teardown a Nintendo Entertainment System, which I found at the Lower East Side Ecology Center Reuse Store in Gowanus, what a great place!

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Aside from dropping off a bag full of old cables and some broken speakers; I had the privilege of walking around with one of the workers there, Carlos Cabrera. He showed me around the prop isles and some back isles where there were some things that he thought could be interesting to teardown. It was a hard choice, but I decided to go for a Nintendo, since it was the first video game I played with as a child. This one was damaged by a spill. Fun fact: the store has a functional one in the front that visitors may test out, I got to play Mario Bros for a couple of minutes =)

The teardown was fairly easy, I used 2 small screwdrivers and a pair of pliers. Clic on the pictures below to see the full progression with some explanations along the way.

Before starting

First few panels off, the bulk of the larger screws were removed by this point

Removing the mechanism that the games feed into, this was the part where dust would give us all problems when loading games

Connections to the circuit board dismanteled

Cables and buttons that lead to the outside of the box removed

This is the Radio Frequency Modulator (RFM) box, it is the part of the circuit board that takes information from the Picture processing Unit (PPU) & turns it into Audio

Inside the RFM, we can see some capacitors, they store electric charge. We also see various resistors, which are used to reduce the flow of electric current through the system.

Here we take a close up at the circuit board, the two large chips are the Picture Prossesing Units or PPUs, note that this unit was manufactured in 1987. Right on top of the date you will see what they call the “Expansion Slot” which was apparently never used

The small chip in the middle that starts with a “uPA…” is a Diode which is a semiconductor device that allows the flow of current in one direction only

Here I disassembled the mechanism for the Power and Reset buttons

Little tabs keep these pieces together, most tabs cracked off when disassembling

Springs are a main function in these switches

Here is a layout of all the small plastic & metal parts in the switch

These are the connectors for the two controllers, the controllers plug into the black large parts and the signal is fed throught the cables into the circuit board through the small green plastic part

And here are all the parts photographed together

One thing that I noticed while tearing down the Nintendo is what caused the unit to break. A liquid of some sort must have spilled on the unit, and seeped through the top vents into important parts of the circuit board. The gravity of the damage could have easily been avoided if the vents would have been designed on the sides or back of the unit. While researching, I also came across people who complained that the way the games hooked into the machine, it is delicate and prone to problems. Not only did dust interfere with the video game (most of us can remember having to blow on the game before inserting it!), but if any of the prongs were bent out of shape, the whole part had to be changed. In the last picture of my slide progression you can see it, it is the black plastic part right above the circuit board.

The experience of tearing down an electronic was pretty fun, researching the parts also yielded some interesting insights about this product, I am still in awe with the complexity of the circuit and I am looking forward to learning more about circuits and programing with Arduino. Thank you!

Teardown transformative robot with remote / Gahee Kang

This robot comes with the remote and it transforms into a robot from a car, by flipping up .

The white bar makes the car open like a robot

I can see the engine which is a heart of the robot.

Battery to the remote panel and to the engine.

close up pictures of the board from the robot.

board from the remote. it has the LED and antenna.

Very simple technology materials compare to the volume of the toy

Teardown: The Late Edition

Breaking down this LG Dumbphone with my Tekton Small Electronics Repair Kit was a fantastic peek inside the black box of mystery and an exercise that really had me intrigued. What is this magic that ruled my life in 2005; this mix of plastic, aluminum, steel, copper, glass, and conductive tape, that is printed, pressed, pulled, stamped, cut, glued, and screwed into a plastic-injected, machine-milled, (wo)manhandled package?

Well, the answer is simple: my favorite phone of all time.

But now you ask me why?

Maybe it’s the sexy Qualcomm RFR 6500 Diversity Receiver?

Or this sweet LED?

Perhaps this LG PCB SUB Flex Cable?

Or the MV8652CAB Logic Board?

Well, no. It’s actually the exterior control functions that I loved the best. I mean, can you resist a touch screen that only exists for the novelty, and could barely register a finger at full tap? Probably not. But if you can, I’m sure that the landscape-intuitive photo button that encouraged proper video capture will steal your heart.

Teardown Photos and Circuit Videos

Once Upon a Hello… Cracking the Secret.

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Gameboy Color TEARDOWN!

The Gameboy Color in Teal!

The only tool and technique you will need to open this is a small flathead screwdriver and, well… screw driving skills. There is some finagling with the external screws, but you can get it! It’s pretty simple and compact in there!

On that note: Two interesting things! One, It’s super compact with lots of hard soldering on the inside. I point this out because I think it’s a huge factor in what makes it feel like a simple object on the outside, molded to closely contain everything inside. The other is what you will later see int he buttons. They’re just silicone rubber and molded plastic! I was hoping to find some button I could appropriate, but instead, just little nubbins! But I suppose this was done to save on damageable parts and space, making the contact points directly in the fiberglass board. Anyway, read on! It’s kinda neat how simple it appears on a large scale, but how complicated it is on the board.

My guess is the casing you see is injection molded. Flip it over and look at the back.

You’ll have to remove these ridiculous tri-wing screws with a tiny flathead if you can’t get a tri-wing driver in a timely manner. That’s what I did. You have to jimmy them around until they slowly turn with the weak torque you can provide. (P.S. My gameboy was missing it’s battery case. I used aluminum tape for years… AA batteries.)

Pop the case off!

Then this plate from the back side that holds the game steady in the access point with four phillips head screws. Plate appears to be stainless. All the screws look like galvanized steel. Three on the interior may be brass. But it is unclear

Now look at the fiberglass circuit board.

It’s held into place by three phillips screws. These are the ones that may be brass. Pull those out and you can pull out the board and flip it! Note: At the top of the board is the connection point for the game cartridge.

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Before you remove the board, detach the LCD screen. There are little black switches to pop out on either side of that red tape. Then just pull out the tab.

Board removed:

This reveals the active side of the speaker that plays MIDI tones in the bottom right hand of the board, and the underside of the buttons on the face of the gameboy.

Also removable is the cover of the power button and the infrared sensor cover.

Power Switch

Infrared on right, power indicator in red LED at top.

Power switch and LED covers both present on the side of the object (left to right).

The black dots on the back of the buttons appear to be magnets or something conductive to make contact with these components in the white portion of the board.

Here too is the volume knob.

You can remove the LCD screen with a black foam padding on the back by prying it lightly with anything flat and sturdy with rounded edges (so as not to damage the thin steel casing). I used a really old flathead screwdriver that wasn’t sharp at all.

The LCD Screen. That’s the last part to remove!

Other parts on the board include a lot of hard soldered stuff.

This includes an optical inverter (right), the CPU (center), regulated power supply module (top left), SHARP chip of some identifiable kind based on number (center left), and an integrated circuit (bottom right).

And here it is all exploded and knolled!

Thanks for looking!

-Will-

LeapFrog Explorer Globe Teardown

For my first teardown I explored the inner workings of LeapFrog’s Explorer Smart Globe. This educational toy functions by touching the pen to a spot on the globe and manipulating the rotational knob and buttons. Users can choose to either learn more about the different areas or test their knowledge in the challenge modes.

The initial teardown was pretty simple and mainly comprised of just loosening screws. Upon further inspection, I realized that the globe itself needed to be dismantled, which revealed secondary circuitry dealing with the interaction of tapping the pen on the globe’s surface.

There are many components in this assembly but, as a summary, the parts are made of hard and soft plastics, metal and rubber for many of the electrical components, paper in the interior of the globe and on the speaker, magnet on the speaker, the copper and substrate of the PCB, and a printed circuit/conductive material on the paper of the globe interior. The plastics are likely injection molded and the PCBs, after they are manufactured, are hand soldered. The hemispherical paper circuit, interestingly enough, has no seams and therefore must have been vacuum formed or molded somehow.

What interested me most about this design is the paper circuit on the interior of the globe. It makes complete sense, knowing what the function of the product is but it was something I had never seen before and wasn’t really expecting. In a society that is so used to touch screen, this concept of tapping something and receiving a response is very obvious or “natural” and not given a second thought. This design however uses a different system than your phone’s touchscreen and it was exciting to see the sheer mass of touchpoints individually printed onto the paper. The other point of this design that interested and puzzled me is the two LEDs that were in the white plastic piece attached to the blue shaft and the corresponding one on the bottom side of the globe interaction circuit. Due to their position and the fact that we don’t see light from these, it makes me think that it’s some sort of IR sensor. However I also can’t figure out why there would be an IR sensor in this location either! Hmmm…

Teardown—LG Cosmos VN250—Julia

I took apart an old cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard. It was surprisingly simple—only held together by a 14 little screws and glue. Here’s the process:

I used only these three tools (and my fingernails):

Phillips head screwdriver
Flat head screwdriver
Prying device

The back of the phone came off easily, and each subsequent layer just had a couple of screws and some adhesive to get through. As far as I could tell, everything in this phone was metal or plastic.

Take off the back of the phone.
Remove battery.
Unscrew screws in the back.
Remove the plastic covers for charging connection, micro-usb, headphones on the sides and bottom.
Pry off the plate which holds this plastic to the QWERTY keyboard and reveal the logic board.
Take off the buttons on the sides (volume, power).
The metal piece covering the middle of the logic board can be removed to reveal the Qualcom QSC6055 processor. More on the logic board below…
Unscrew two more screws to reveal the QWERTY keypad and plastic piece underneath.
The LCD/Numeric Keypad Cable threads through a hole in the black plastic beneath the logic board. Unscrew two more screws and pry off this black plastic.
Underneath that black plastic are the data connections to the screen and the front keypad. Carefully peel off the tape that holds the connections down and unplug them. The screen will lift out. The keypad is behind the data board.

GROUP SHOT!

Now, more on the logic board:

Here’s what I learned about all that a circuit board contains:

The circuit board holding microchips and processors inside a cell phone serves as the brains of the outfit. A digital signal processor, or DSP, converts an analog signal — your voice — to digital for transmission through the provider’s network. The DSP also converts a received digital signal to analog and moves the analog to the phone’s speaker and your ear. Radio frequency transmitters and receivers handle the signal as it moves to and from the phone. A microprocessor on the circuit board controls the phone’s various other functions, such as the keyboard and display. The phone’s operating system works from a memory chip, and the power management system keeps the device operating under battery power. A baseband chip serves as the phone’s antenna, grabbing and emitting digital signals when the phone is in use.

Here are all the parts I could identify:

Qualcomm CPU QSC6055
Micro SD slot
1.2 Megapixel camera
Speaker
Audio jack
3.7V Lithium-Ion Polymer Battery
LCD screen
QWERTY and regular keypad
ZIF connectors
Glued down cable ribbons

I couldn’t identify all the parts, but I did marvel at how simple the complex circuitry appeared.

I think the ribbon cable connectors are so elegant. It keeps everything very organized and clean (and flat), but the connections are very strong. I like the contradiction of these paper thin connectors and the power that is supplied through them. I’m always surprised by how sturdy and functional the connections are, especially on ZIF connectors.

IMG_20150923_222216208 — Back of the screen with plastic covered connector tape

I am also intrigued by the pressure sensors that are beneath all of the buttons. They are so sturdy, and the keyboard itself can withstand a lot of damage before the sensors beneath are affected.