Here’s a destructive teardown of an automotive in-tank turbine fuel pump, used on modern Petrol cars. These units sit in the tank fully immersed in the fuel, which also circulates through the motor inside for cooling. These pumps aren’t serviceable – they’re crimped shut on both ends. Luckily the steel shell is thin, so attacking the crimp joint with a pair of mole grips & a screwdriver allowed me inside.
End Bell
The input endbell of the pump has the fuel inlet ports, the channels are visible machined into the casting. There’s a pair of channels for two pump outputs – the main fuel rail to the engine, and an auxiliary fuel output to power a venturi pump. The fuel pump unit sits inside a swirl pot, which holds about a pint of fuel. These are used to ensure the pump doesn’t run dry & starve the engine when the tank level is low & the car is being driven hard. The venturi pump draws fuel from the main tank into the swirl pot. A steel ball is pressed in to the end bell to provide a thrust bearing for the motor armature.
Turbine Impeller
The core of the pump is this impeller, which is similar to a side-channel blower. From what I’ve been able to find these units supply pressures up to about 70PSI for the injector rail. The outside ring is the main fuel pump, while the smaller inner one provides the pressure to run the venturi pump.
Pump Housing
The other side of the machined pump housing has the main output channel, with the fuel outlet port at the bottom. The motor shaft is supported in what looks like a carbon bearing.
Midsection
Removing the pump intermediate section with the bearing reveals quite a bit of fungus – it’s probably been happy sat in here digesting what remains of the fuel.
Armature Exposed
Some peeling with mole grips allows the motor to come apart entirely. The drive end of the armature is visible here.
Motor Can
The outer shell of the motor holds yet more fungus, along with some rust & the pair of ceramic permanent magnets.
Brushes
The other end of the pump has the brush assembly, and the fuel outlet check valve to the right. The bearing at this end is just the plastic end cap, since there are much lower forces at this end of the motor. The fuel itself provides the lubrication required.
Potted Armature
With the armature pulled out of the housing, it’s clear that there’s been quite a bit of water in here as well, with the laminations rusting away. This armature is fully potted in plastic, with none of the copper windings visible.
Carbon Commutator
The commutator in these motors is definitely a strange one – it’s axial rather than radial in construction, and the segments are made of carbon like the brushes. No doubt this is to stop the sparking that usually occurs with brushed motors – preventing ignition of fuel vapour in the pump when air manages to get in as well, such as in an empty tank.
Since I seem to be the local go-to for any dead electrical equipment, this brand-new Silverline polisher has landed on my desk. Purchased cheap from an auction this was dead on arrival. Checking the fuse revealed nothing suspect, so a quick teardown to find the fault was required.
Above is a photo of the commutator with the brush holder removed, and the source of the issue. The connection onto the field winding of the universal motor has been left unsecured, as a result it’s managed to move into contact with the commutator.
This has done a pretty good job of chewing it’s way through the wire entirely. There is some minor damage to the commutator segments, but it’s still smooth, and shouldn’t damage the brushes.
Chewed Wire
A quick pull on what’s left of the wire reveals the extent of the problem. It’s entirely burned through! Unfortunately the stator assembly with the field windings is pressed into the plastic housing, so it’s not removable. An in-place solder joint was required to the very short remains of the wire inside the housing. Once this was done the polisher sprang to life immediately, with no other damage.
This unit probably ended up at an auction as a factory reject, or a customer return to a retail outlet. If the latter, I would seriously question the quality control procedures of Silverline tools. 😉
The housing of the contaminated motor was left to soak in diesel for a few hours to loosen the grok, this has come very clean. I couldn’t have used a stronger solvent here – the magnets are glued in place in the steel housing, I certainly didn’t want them coming loose!
Brushboxes
Next into the diesel bath are the motor end bells with the brushgear. Attack with a stiff brush cleaned these up very well, some cotton buds served to clean out the brass brush holders.
Armatures After Skimming
Here are both armatures, having had their commutators resurfaced. I’ve completely removed all traces of the wear caused by the contamination, luckly the commutator bars are very heavy on these motors so can take quite a bit of wear before there’s not enough left to skim. I’ve not yet pulled off the old bearings, but they are all going to be replaced with new SKF bearings, as they’ve been contaminated with grok over the years of use. I’m also going to uprate the front motor bearings to rubber sealed instead of metal shielded, to help keep lubricant out of the motors if the gearbox seals ever fail again.
Gearbox
The gearboxes have been cleaned out with some elbow grease, assisted by a long soak in petrol, I’ve refilled them here with engine oil as temporary lube & to flush out the last remains of the old grease & solvent. The worm wheel in these boxes is bronze – so a GL4 gear oil will be required. (Some Extreme Pressure additive packs contain sulphur, and will readily attack copper alloys, such as brass & bronze).
Commutator End Bearings
Here’s the armatures, after the new SKF sealed bearings have been fitted to the commutator end, above, and the drive end, below. These will cause some extra drag on the armatures, and slightly higher power consumption as a result, but keeping the crap out of the motors is slightly more important.
Drive End BearingsFresh Commutator Skim
The commutators have been lightly skimmed with abrasive cloth, and finished with 1500 grit emery. The armature on the right has been run for a short time to see how the new brushes are bedding in.
Old Seal Removed
Finally, the old oil seals are pulled from the gearboxes. The worm gear bearing on the inside is actually a sealed version, with the external oil seal providing some extra sealing. I haven’t changed the gearbox bearings, as they seem to be in good order, this might get done at some point in the future.
So it’s time to get the propulsion system underway for the trolley, a pair of wheelchair motors were sourced for this, from HacMan. Since I don’t know how many hours are on these units, or how they’ve been treated in the past, I’m going to do a full service on them to ensure reliability. I decided on wheelchair motors due to their extreme ruggedness & heavily built components – this project when complete is going to weigh in at about 150kg!
I suspected something was amiss with one of the motors from running them under no load: the left hand wheelchair motor was heating up to the point of being too hot to touch, so this one at the very least needed some investigation.
Motor Disassembly & Assessment
Rear Cover Removed
With the back cover removed from the motor the electromagnetic brake is revealed. This engages when power is removed to stop the motor freewheeling, which even though it’s a wormdrive box, it will do readily if backdriven.
Electromagnetic Brake Assembly
The brake is rated 6.7W at 24v DC.
Brake Disc
The brake disc is just visible between the plates of the brake here, with some green dust worn off the disc. When power is applied, the top disc, just under the magnet on top, is pulled upward against spring pressure away from the brake disc, which is attached to the motor armature.
Brake Disc
Here’s the brake disc, removed from the motor. There’s only a little wear here, as I’d expect – these brakes don’t engage until the motors have come to a complete stop.
Brake Actuator
The steel disc above the magnet acts as one of the friction surfaces of the brake.
Brake Solenoid
Finally, the solenoid is at the back, partially potted in resin. The strong coil spring in the centre applies the brakes when power is disconnected.
Gearbox Grok
Removing the top of the gearbox reveals the state of the internals – There’s no wear at all on the gearset, but the lubricant is totally manky. The external oil seals have been leaking for some time, letting water in and grease out. The emulsified result is revolting! These gearboxes have a wormdrive first stage, the worm gear is underneath the left hand gearset. Steel spur gears then do the final gearing to the output shaft. The output gear is splined onto the output, and can slide along the shaft out of mesh – this is the freewheel clutch mechanism. At the moment it’s all obscured by the disgusting lubricant.
Input Shaft Seal
Here’s the failed seal on the left hand gearbox, the face damage was done by petrol immersion to clean everything up. (The seal is already compromised, so I’m not fussed about solvents eating the remaining rubber). The motor shaft is joined to the gearbox input by a rubber coupling.
Output Shaft Seal
The output shaft seals seem to be still OK, there has been some seepage past the collar that the shaft rides in, but nothing more. This can be resealed with some Loctite bearing sealant. The sleeve is held into the gearbox by the wheel hub when in operation, but this doesn’t seal the gap unfortunately. I don’t know why the manufacturer didn’t just machine the shaft to that larger diameter, instead of using an extra sleeve to accommodate the seal.
Bore Seals
The bore seals covering the ends of the shafts are also fine, which is a good thing, since I can’t seem to find replacements for these anywhere. The input shaft seals will be replaced on both gearboxes though.
Motor Contamination
The oil seal must have been leaking for a long while! This is the gearbox end of the wheelchair motor frame, completely clogged with grease. Luckily only a small amount has made it down past the armature to the brushgear.
Damaged Commutator
The commutator of this motor is badly damaged, and the brushes are very worn. This has been caused by the gearbox oil seal failing, and contaminating the motor internals with lubricant. The undercut between the segments is all but gone – filled with an abrasive mixture of brush dust, copper dust & old lubricant. Some repair work will be required here.
Second Motor
Here’s the brushgear removed from the second wheelchair motor, this one looks much more normal, and there’s not as much wear on the brushes or the commutator. Just the usual coating of brush dust.
Armatures
Here’s both armatures together, with the contaminated one on the right, after some cleaning to remove most of the greasy old grok & brush dust from everything. The windings on the damaged left hand wheelchair motor haven’t darkened, which I would expect from severe overheating damage, so I’m hoping this armature is OK, and won’t require a rewind. Using an ohmmeter on these windings doesn’t tell me much – there’s only 7 turns of 0.86mm (20AWG) magnet wire in each coil, so they read as a dead short anyway. There was some leakage between the windings and the core before I cleaned things up – this was in the high (28+) megohms range, but this seems to have cleared now I’ve given things a real good cleaning.
Another decapped IC! This one is an ST L6219 750mA stepper motor driver. The control logic is all at the bottom of the die, with the high current H-Bridge transistors at the top.
With the installation of the new diesel fired heater we’ve noticed a small problem – since the only heat source in the saloon is the stove, even with the diesel heater fired up the temperature doesn’t really change much, as the heat from the radiators in the both the cabins & the head isn’t spreading far enough.
The solution to this problem is obviously an extra radiator in the saloon, however there isn’t the space to fit even a small domestic-style radiator. eBay turned up some heater matrix units designed for kit cars & the like:
3.8kW Matrix
These small heater matrix units are nice & compact, so will fit into the back of a storage cupboard next to the saloon. Rated at a max heat output of 3.8kW, just shy of the stove’s rated 4kW output power, this should provide plenty of heating when we’re running the diesel heater rather than the fire.
Water & Power
The blower motor has a resistor network to provide 3 speeds, but this probably won’t be used in this install, water connections are via 15mm copper tails. The current plan is to use a pipe thermostat on the flow from the boiler to switch on the blower when the water temperature reaches about 40°C.
Hot Air Outlets
The hot air emerges from the matrix via 4 55mm duct sockets. This gives enough outlets to cover both the saloon & the corridor down to the cabins.
Hot Air Vents
Standard 60mm Eberspacher style vents will be used to point the warmth where it’s needed.
Time foe some more retro tech! This is a 1980’s vintage CCD-based VHS camcorder from Panasonic, the NV-M5. There are a lot of parts to one of these (unlike modern cameras), so I’ll split this post into several sections to make things easier to read (and easier to keep track of what I’m talking about :)).
Left Side
The left side of the camera holds the autofocus, white balance, shutter speed & date controls.
Left Side ControlsLens Adjustments
The lens is fully adjustable, with either manual or motorized automatic control.
Rear Panel
The back panel has the battery slot, a very strange looking DC input connector, remote control connector & the earphone jack.
Top Controls
The top panel of the camera holds the main power controls, manual tape tracking & the tape transport control panel.
Viewfinder
The viewfinder is mounted on a swivel mount. There’s a CRT based composite monitor in here. Hack ahoy!
Camera Section
Process Board Assembly
Here’s the camera section of the camcorder, and is totally packed with electronics! There’s at least half a dozen separate boards in here, all fitted together around the optics tube assembly.
AWB PCB
On the top of the assembly is the Automatic White Balance PCB. Many adjustments here to get everything set right. Not much on the other side of this board other than a bunch of Op-Amps. The iris stepper motor is fitted in a milled opening in the PCB, this connects to one of the other PCBs in the camera module.
AWB Sensor
Here’s the AWB sensor, mounted next to the lens. I’m not all to certain how this works, but the service manual has the pinout, and there are outputs for all the colour channels, RGB. So it’s probably a trio of photodiodes with filters.
Focus & Zoom Motors
Focus & Zoom are controlled with a pair of DC gear motors. The manual operation is feasible through the use of slip clutches in the final drive pinion onto the lens barrel.
Process Board
The main camera section process board is above. This board does all the signal processing for the CCD, has the bias voltage supplies and houses the control sections for the motorized parts of the optics assembly. There are quite a few dipped Tantalum capacitors on pigtails, instead of being directly board mounted. This was probably done due to space requirements on the PCB itself.
Under the steel shield on this board is some of the main signal processing for the CCD.
Optics Assembly
The back of the optics tube is a heavy casting, to supress vibration. This will be more clear later on.
Position Sensor Flex
The position of the lens elements is determined by reflective strips on the barrel & sensors on this flex PCB.
Sub Process Board
There’s another small board tucked into the side of the tube, this hooks into the process PCB.
Process Delay Line
According to the schematic, there’s nothing much on this board, just a delay line & a few transistors.
Piezo Focus Disc
Here’s the reason for the heavy alloy casing at the CCD mounting end of the optics: the fine focus adjustment is done with a piezoelectric disc, the entire CCD assembly is mounted to this board. Applying voltage to the electrodes moves the assembly slightly to alter the position of the CCD. The blue glass in the centre of the unit is the IR filter.
IR Relective Sensors
The barrel position sensors are these IR-reflective type.
Iris Assembly
The iris is mounted just before the CCD, this is controlled with a galvanometer-type device with position sensors incorporated.
Iris Opening
Pushing on the operating lever with the end of my screwdriver opens the leaves of the iris against the return spring.
Tape Transport & Main Control
Main Control Board
Tucked into the side of the main body of the unit is the main system control board. This PCB houses all the vital functions of the camera: Power Supply, Servo Control, Colour Control,Video Amplifiers, etc.
Tape Drum
Here’s the main tape transport mechanism, this is made of steel & aluminium stampings for structural support. The drum used in this transport is noticeably smaller than a standard VHS drum, the tape is wrapped around more of the drum surface to compensate.
Tape Transport
The VHS tape sits in this carriage & the spools drive the supply & take up reels in the cartridge.
Main Control PCB
Here’s the component side of the main control PCB. This one is very densely packed with parts, I wouldn’t like to try & troubleshoot something like this!
Main PCB Left
The left side has the video head amp at the top, a Panasonic AN3311K 4-head video amp. Below that is video processing, the blue components are the analogue delay lines. There are a couple of hybrid flat-flex PCBs tucked in between with a couple of ICs & many passives. These hybrids handle the luma & chroma signals.
Top left is the capstan motor driver a Rohm BA6430S. The transport motors are all 3-phase brushless, with exception of the loading motor, which is a brushed DC type.
Delay Line
Here’s what is inside the delay lines for the analogue video circuits. The plastic casing holds a felt liner, inside which is the delay line itself.
Internal Glass
The delay is created by sending an acoustic signal through the quartz crystal inside the device by a piezoelectric transducer, bouncing it off the walls of the crystal before returning it to a similar transducer.
Main PCB Centre
Here’s the centre of the board, the strange crystal at bottom centre is the clock crystal for the head drum servo. Why it has 3 pins I’m not sure, only the two pins to the crystal inside are shown connected on the schematic. Maybe grounding the case?
The main servo controls for the head drum & the capstan motor are top centre, these get a control signal from the tape to lock the speed of the relative components.
Main PCB Right
Here’s the right hand side. The main power supply circuitry is at top right, with a large can containing 4 switching inductors & a ferrite pot core transformer. All these converters are controlled by a single BA6149 6-channel DC-DC converter controller IC via a ULN2003 transistor array.
The ceramic hybrid board next to the PSU has 7 switch transistors for driving various indicator LEDs.
The large tabbed IC bottom centre is the loading motor drive, an IC from Mitsubishi, the M54543. This has bidirectional DC control of the motor & built in braking functions. The large quad flat pack IC on the right is the MN1237A on-screen character generator, with the two clock crystals for the main microcontroller.
Erase Head
The full erase head has it’s power supply & oscillator on board, applying 9v to this board results in an AC signal to the head, which erases the old recording from the tape before the new recording is laid down by the flying heads on the drum.
Audio Control PCB
The Audio & Control head is connected to this PCB, which handles both reading back audio from the tape & recording new audio tracks. The audio bias oscillator is on this board, & the onboard microphone feeds it’s signal here. The control head is fed directly through to the servo section of the main board.
Drum Motor
The motor that drives the head drum is another DC brushless 3-phase type.
Hall Sensors
These 3 Hall sensors are used by the motor drive to determine the rotor position & time commutation accordingly.
Stator
The stator on this motor is of interesting construction, with no laminated core, the coils are moulded into the plastic holder. The tach sensor is on the side of the stator core. This senses a small magnet on the outside of the rotor to determine rotational speed. For PAL recordings, the drum rotates at 1500 RPM.
Motor Removed
Not much under the stator other than the bearing housing & the feedthrough to the rotary transformer.
Head Disc
The heads are mounted onto the top disc of the drum, 4 heads in this recorder. The signals are transmitted to the rotating section through the ferrite rotary transformer on the bottom section.
Head Chip
The tiny winding of the ferrite video head can just about be seen on the end of the brass mounting.
Capstan Motor Components
The capstan motor is similar to the drum motor, only this one is flat. The rotor has a ferrite magnet, in this case it wasn’t glued in place, just held by it’s magnetic field.
Capstan Motor Stator
The PCB on this motor has a steel backing to complete the magnetic circuit, the coils for the 3 motor phases are simply glued in place. The Hall sensors on this motor are placed in the middle of the windings though.
Again there is a tach sensor on the edge of the board that communicates the speed back to the controller. This allows the servo to remain locked at constant speed.
Viewfinder
Viewfinder Assembly
As usual with these cameras, this section is the CRT based viewfinder. These units take the composite signal from the camera to display the scene. This one has many more pins than the usual viewfinder. I’ll hack a manual input into this, but I’ll leave that for another post.
Viewfinder Circuits
Being an older camera than the ones I’ve had before, this one is on a pair of PCBs, which are both single-sided.
Main Viewfinder Board
The main board has all the power components for driving the CRT & some of the adjustments. The main HV flyback transformer is on the right. This part creates both the final anode voltage for the tube & the focus/grid voltages.
Viewfinder Control PCB Top
The viewfinder control IC is on a separate daughter board in this camera, with two more controls.
Control IC
The control IC is a Matsushita AN2510S, this has all the logic required to separate the sync pulses from the composite signal & generate an image on the CRT.
Viewfinder CRT Frame
The recording indicator LEDs are mounted in the frame of the CRT & appear above the image in the viewfinder.
Viewfinder CRT With Yoke
Here the CRT has been separated from the rest of the circuitry with just the deflection yoke still attached.
M01JPG5WB CRT
The electron gun in this viewfinder CRT is massive in comparison to the others that I have seen, and the neck of the tube is also much wider. These old tubes were very well manufactured.
Viewfinder Optics
A simple mirror & magnifying lens completes the viewfinder unit.
Here’s another Eberspacher control unit, this time from an ancient D5W 5kW water heater. The system in this case is just flaky – sometimes the heater will start without fault & run perfectly, then suddenly will stop working entirely.
The error codes are read on these very old units via an indicator lamp connected to a test terminal. In this case the code was the one for Overheat Shutdown.
Considering this fault occurs when the heater is stone cold, I figured it was either a fault with the sensor itself or the ECU.
Temperature Sensor
The temperature sensor is located on the heat exchanger, right next to the hot water outlet fitting. I’m not sure what the spec is, but it reads exactly 1KΩ at room temperature.
ECU PCB
The PCB is held into the aluminium can by means of crimps around the edge that lock into the plastic terminal cover. Inserting a screwdriver & expanding the crimps allows the PCB to be slid out.
Casing Crimps
The factory date stamp on the microcontroller dates this unit to March 1989 – considerably older than I expected!
Unlike the newer versions that use transistors, this ECU has a bunch of PCB relays to do the high current switching of the water pump motor, fan motor & glowplug.
Overall the board looks to be solidly constructed, with silicone around all the larger components.
ECU PCB Solder Side
Here’s the solder side of the PCB, which has a generous coating of sealant to keep moisture out.
Bad Joint Closeup
Looking at the solder joints for the row of relays on the top side of the PCB, it looks like that there’s some dry joints here.
I suspect that years of vibration has taken it’s toll, as the relays are otherwise unsupported. It wouldn’t be possible to use silicone to secure these devices as they are completely open – any sealant would likely stop them from operating.
Resoldered Joints
Using a very hot soldering iron I managed to get the joints to reflow properly, using lots of flux to make sure the conformal coating didn’t interfere with the reflow.
I go camping on a regular basis here in the UK, and often even in summer it’s horribly cold at night in a field somewhere in the middle of Leicestershire. This doesn’t go too well with my severe aversion to being cold.
For the past several years I’ve used a Tilley lamp for some heat & light while at festivals & general camping, but it’s heat output is less than stellar when used in a 6-man tent.
An Eberspacher diesel heater was what was required for the job. Above is the unit as it’s built at the moment – I’ve used an old D1LCC 1.8kW heater that was recently decommissioned from nb Tanya Louise, as it’s getting a bit funny about what kind of fuel it’ll run on in it’s old age. It’ll work perfectly well on kerosene though – a fuel I already take with me camping for the Tilley.
It’s mounted on a base box, which is a repurposed steel electrical junction box that saw a previous life containing a 3-phase fan motor controller.
Data Plate
Here’s the info on the heater unit itself. Drawing 22W of power at 12v I’ll be getting 1.8kW of heat output – sounds good to me.
Box Internals
Here’s a view into the base box before the circulation fans were fitted, in early prototype stage. I used a small toroid as a clunk on the end of the rubber fuel line 😉
Support Components
After a few bits from the Great eBay arrived, here’s the internals of the base unit at present. The fuel tank is a repurposed 2L fridge water container – made of tough HDPE so it’s fuel resistant.
The fuel pump is mounted on the left side next to the tank – having been wrapped in some foam to deaden the continual ticking noise it creates. The exhaust & it’s silencer are mounted at the rear, the silencer being retained by a surplus rubber shock mount. Luckily the exhaust systems on these heaters don’t get particularly hot, so the rubber doesn’t melt.
The exhaust outlet is routed through the frame, to be attached to an external hose. I don’t want combustion gases in the tent with me!
Standard Eberspacher silencers also aren’t gas-tight from the factory – they’re designed to be used in the open on the underframe of a vehicle, so I’ve covered all the seams in aluminium tape to make the system airtight.
Ventilation
To make sure that the support components don’t get overheated with the exhaust being in such close proximity, and to pull a little more heat out of the system, a pair of slow-running 80mm fans has been fitted to the end of the box. These blow enough air through to give a nice warm breeze from the vents on the other end of the base.
Fuel Tank
The tank I’ve used just so happened to be the perfect size to fit into the base box, and to tap the fuel off a bulkhead fitting was put into the top of the tank, with a dip tube on the other side. The fuel line itself is tiny – only 4mm.
If the specifications from Eberspacher are to be believed, 2L of fuel on board will allow the system to run for about 8 hours on full power, or 16 hours on minimum power.
Being inside the base, refuelling is a little awkward at the moment, the heater has to completely cool before the exhaust can be detached without receiving a burn, so I’ll be building in a fuel transfer system from an external jerry can later to automate the process – this will also help to avoid messy fuel spills.
More to come when the rest of the system is worked out!
I got one of these to test since I’ve been in need of some small DC pumps for fluid transfer use. At £2 I can definitely afford to experiment.
DC Motor
On the eBay listing, these pumps are rated at 3-12v DC, (I thought that was a bit wide of an operating range), I looked up the motor, an RS-360SH on Mabuchi’s website, they only have models in this range rated at 7.2v & 24v. Judging by the size of the windings on the armature & the fact that after a few minutes operation on 12v it gets rather hot, I’m going to say this is the 7.2v motor.
Pump Gears
Removing the screws releases the end cover & the pair of gears inside. This operates like any other hydraulic gear motor, albeit with much wider tolerances. It has no capability to hold pressure when the power is removed, and can be blown through easily.
Flow & pressure under power are quite good for the pump’s size, even though it’s noisy as hell.
I recently dug out my other card printer to fit it with a 12v regulator, (it’s 24v at the moment), and figured I’d do a teardown post while I had the thing in bits.
This is a less industrial unit than my Zebra P330i, but unlike the Zebra, it has automatic duplexing, it doesn’t have Ethernet connectivity though.
Unlike domestic printers, which are built down to a price, these machines are very much built up to a spec, and feature some very high quality components.
Naked Printer
Here’s the mechanism with the cowling removed. This is the main drive side of the printer, with the main drive stepper at left, ribbon take-up spool motor lower right, and the duplex module stepper motors at far right.
Main Motor Drive
The main drive motor runs the various rollers in the card path through a pair of synchronous belts, shown here.
Main Stepper
The stepper itself is a quality ball-bearing Sanyo Denki bipolar motor.
Main Stepper Driver
Electrical drive is provided to the stepper with a L6258EX DMOS universal motor driver. This chip can also drive DC motors as well as steppers.
Ribbon Supply Spool
Here is the encoder geared onto the ribbon supply spool. This is used to monitor the speed the ribbon is moving relative to the card.
Printer Top
Here’s a top view through the printer, the blue roller on the left cleans the card as it’s pulled from the feeder, the gold coloured spool to it’s right is the ribbon supply reel. The cooling fan on the right serves to stop the print head overheating during heavy use.
Spool Take Up Motor
The spool take-up reel is powered by another very high quality motor, a Buhler DC gearmotor. These printers are very heavily over engineered!
This motor drives the spool through an O-Ring belt, before the gear above. This allows the drive to slip in the event the ribbon jams, preventing it from breaking.
Duplex Unit Stepper Drivers
The pair of steppers that operate the duplexing unit are driven by a separate board, with a pair of L6219DS bipolar stepper driver ICs. There are also a couple of opto-sensors on this board for the output hopper.
Main Control PCB
All the mechanisms of the printer are controlled from this main PCB, which handles all logic & power supply functions. Sections on the board are unpopulated, these would be for the Ethernet interface, smart card programming & magstripe programming.
Main CPU
The brains of the operation is this ColdFire MCF5208CVM166 32-bit microprocessor. It features 16KB of RAM, 8KB of cache, DMA controller, 3 UARTs, SPI, 10/100M Ethernet and low power management. This is a fairly powerful processor, running at 166MHz.
It’s paired with an external 128Mbit SDRAM from Samsung, and a Spansion 8Mbit boot sector flash, for firmware storage.
USB Interface & Power Input
Here the USB interface IC is located. It’s a USBN9604 from Texas Instruments, this interfaces with the main CPU via serial.
Finally, after months of messing about with the original seller of the generator unit, (Mike Webb from hydraulicgenerators.co.uk, more to come about the nightmare I had dealing with this man), we have had to purchase a new hydraulic control valve for the genset, as the original unit supplied was missing parts.
Thanks to Martin Bullock from BSP Hydraulics for supplying this at short notice!
Flow Control ModuleSolenoid Spool ValveControl Valve Block
This unit contains a pressure relief valve, to set system operating pressure, a throttle/flow control valve to set generator motor speed & a solenoid controlled spool valve to control general oil flow to the generator. This last section effectively operates as an ON/OFF control.
System pressure will be ~175 Bar at 21 litres/minute.
More to come soon with the final assembly, hosing up & system commissioning.
This is a late 90’s business timeclock, used for maintaining records of staff working times, by printing the time when used on a sheet of card.
Front Internal
Here is the top cover removed, which is normally locked in place to stop tampering. The unit is programmed with the 3 buttons & the row of DIP switches along the top edge.
Instructions
Closeup of the settings panel, with all the various DIP switch options.
CPU & Display
Cover plate removed from the top, showing the LCD & CPU board, the backup battery normally fits behind this. The CPU is a 4-bit microcontroller from NEC, with built in LCD driver.
PSU & Drivers
Power Supply & prinhead drivers. This board is fitted with several NPN Darlington transistor arrays for driving the dox matrix printhead.
Printhead
Printhead assembly itself. The print ribbon fits over the top of the head & over the pins at the bottom. The drive hammers & solenoids are housed in the circular top of the unit.
Printhead Bottom
Bottom of the print head showing the row of impact pins used to create the printout.
Bottom of the solenoid assembly with the ribbon cable for power. There are 9 solenoids, to operate the 9 pins in the head.
Return Spring
Top layer of the printhead assembly, showing the leaf spring used to hold the hammers in the correct positions.
Hammers
Hammer assembly. The fingers on the ends of the arms push on the pins to strike through the ribbon onto the card.
Solenoids
The ring of solenoids at the centre of the assembly. These are driven with 3A darlington power arrays on the PSU board.
Gearbox Internals
There is only a single drive motor in the entire unit, that both clamps the card for printing & moves the printhead laterally across the card. Through a rack & pinion this also advances the ribbon with each print.
Here is an old chemical dosing system for industrial washing machines. These units are 4-pump models, with dual pumpheads. The motors are reversed to operate alternate pumps in the same head.
Label
From 2006, this is a fairly old unit, and made in the UK.
CPU Board
Main controller PCB, with interface to the power electronics via the ribbon cable, an external serial port for programming to it’s left. Powered by an ST microcontroller. The LCD is below this board.
PCU & Driver PCBs
Main power supply, sense input & motor driver boards. The PSU outputs +5v, +12v & +24v. The inputs on the lower left connect to the washing machine & trigger the pumps via the programming on the CPU. The motors are driven by L6202 H-Bridge drivers from ST.
Motor Assembly
Motor & gearbox assembly on the back of the pumphead. These are 24v DC units with 80RPM gearboxes.
UPDATE:
As it seems to be difficult to find, here is the user manual for this unit:
[download id=”5557″]
This is the teardown of a Zebra P330i plastic card printer, used for creating ID cards, membership cards, employee cards, etc. I got this as a faulty unit, which I will detail later on.
This printer supports printing on plastic cards from 1-30mils thick, using dye sublimation & thermal transfer type printing methods. Interfaces supplied are USB & Ethernet. The unit also has the capability to be fitted with a mag stripe encoder & a smart card encoder, for extra cost.
Print Engine
On the left here is the print engine open, the blue cartridge on the right is a cleaning unit, using an adhesive roller to remove any dirt from the incoming card stock.
This is extremely important on a dye sublimation based printing engine as any dirt on the cards will cause printing problems.
Cards In Feeder
Here on the right is the card feeder unit, stocked with cards. This can take up to 100 cards from the factory.
The blue lever on the left is used to set the card thickness being used, to prevent misfeeds. There is a rubber gate in the intake port of the printer which is moved by this lever to stop any more than a single card from being fed into the print engine at any one time.
Card Feeder Belt
Here is the empty card feeder, showing the rubber conveyor belt. This unit was in fact the problem with the printer, the drive belt from the DC motor under this unit was stripped, preventing the cards from feeding into the printer.
Print Head
Here is a closeup of the print head assembly. The brown/black stripe along the edge is the row of thin-film heating elements. This is a 300DPI head.
Print Station
This is under the print head, the black roller on the left is the platen roller, which supports the card during printing. The spool in the center of the picture is the supply spool for the dye ribbon.
In the front of the black bar in the bottom center, is a two-colour sensor, used to locate the ribbon at the start of the Yellow panel to begin printing.
LCD PCB
Inside the top cover is the indicator LCD, the back of which is pictured right.
This is a 16×1 character LCD from Hantronix. This unit has a parallel interface.
LCD
Front of the LCD, this is white characters on a blue background.
Roller Drive Belts
Here is the cover removed from the printer, showing the drive belts powering the drive rollers. There is an identical arrangement on the other side of the print engine running the other rollers at the input side of the engine.
Mains Filter
Here the back panel has been removed from the entire print engine, complete with the mains input wiring & RFI filtering.
This unit has excellent build quality, just what is to be expected from a £1,200+ piece of industrial equipment.
Main Frame With Motors
The bottom of the print engine, with all the main wiring & PCB removed, showing the main drive motors. The left hand geared motor operates the head lift, the centre motor is a stepper, which operates the main transmission for the cards. The right motor drives the ribbon take up spindle through an O-Ring belt.
Feeder Drive Motor
Card feeder drive motor, this connects to the belt assembly through a timing belt identical to the roller drive system.
All these DC geared motors are 18v DC, of varying torque ratings.
Power Supply
Here is the main power supply, a universal input switch-mode unit, outputting 24v DC at 3.3A.
PSU Label
PSU info. This is obviously an off the shelf unit, manufactured by Hitek. Model number FUEA240.
Print Engine Rear
The PSU has been removed from the back of the print engine, here is shown the remaining mechanical systems of the printer.
Print Engine Components
A further closeup of the print engine mechanical bay, the main stepper motor is bottom centre, driving the brass flywheel through another timing belt drive. The O-Ring drive on the right is for the ribbon take up reel, with the final motor driving the plastic cam on the left to raise/lower the print head assembly.
The brass disc at the top is connected through a friction clutch to the ribbon supply reel, which provides tension to keep it taut. The slots in the disc are to sense the speed of the ribbon during printing, which allows the printer to tell if there is no ribbon present or if it has broken.
RFID PCB
Here is a further closeup, showing the RFID PCB behind the main transmission. This allows the printer to identify the ribbon fitted as a colour or monochrome.
The antenna is under the brass interrupter disc on the left.
I/O Daughterboard
The I/O daughterboard connects to the main CPU board & interfaces all the motors & sensors in the printer.
Main PCB
Here is the main CPU board, which contains all the logic & processing power in the printer.
CPU
Main CPU. This is a Freescale Semiconductor part, model number MCF5206FT33A, a ColdFire based 32-bit CPU. Also the system ROM & RAM can be seen on the right hand side of this picture.
Ethernet Interface
Bottom of the Ethernet interface card, this clearly has it’s own RAM, ROM & FPGA. This is due to this component being a full Parallel interface print server.
Ethernet Interface Top
Top of the PCB, showing the main processor of the print server. This has a ferrite sheet glued to the top, for interference protection.
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 Removed
Back cover removed from the unit, showing the PCB & the connections. The IC is the controller/amplifier.
PCB
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.
Tape Deck
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.
Drive
Front of the tape drive. Read/write head is top centre. Blue head is bulk erase head used during recording.
An old IDE interface Zip drive. This fits in a standard 3.5″ bay.
Cover Removed
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
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
Controller PCB removed from the casing.
Spindle Motor
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
Magnets that interact with the voice coil on the head assembly.
Head Armature
Head armature assembly removed from the drive. The arm is supported by a pair of linear bearings & a stainless steel rod.
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
Cylinders
The pair of hydraulic cylinders that attached to the roof mechanism.
Limit Switch
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.
Hose
Marking on the hoses. This is Parker Polyflex hydraulic hose. 1/8″ ID.
Motor
Drive motor for the hydraulic pump. Standard DC permanent magnet motor.
Motor Suppression
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 Relays
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.
Tank
Detail of the oil tank showing the level markings.
Power Valve
Solenoid valve on top of the unit. This valve provides full pump pressure to the cylinders when energized.
For those that are interested, here is the ID label, this is a PSP-2003.
Front Removed
Here the front of the unit has been removed, showing the first internal components.
Screen Removed
Here is the unit with the LCD removed, here the mainboard is partially visible.
Left Pad
Left pad unit removed from the PSP, with the left speaker & the memory stick slot cover.
Left Pad Rear
Rear of the left pad assembly, showing the speaker.
Joypad
Joypad removed from the casing. Resistive unit.
Output Jack
Headphone/data board removed from the casing. This also has TV-Out on the PSP-200x series.
Mainboard
Mainboard removed. Main CPU is at the top. Sockets around the bottom connect to the UMD drive & UMD Drive.
CPU & GPU
Closeup of the main chipset. CPU is the top IC.
Mainboard Rear
Rear of the mainboard, Memory Stick socket on the right.
WiFi Chipset
Closeup of the WiFi chipset & the charging power socket on the right.
Charging Chipset
Closeup of the bettery connector & the charge controller IC.
UMD Drive
UMD Drive removed from the rear of the casing. This is a miniature DVD style drive, using a 635nm visible red laser.
UMD Drive Back
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.
This is the internals of a motorised valve for central heating systems. Here the top is removed showing the motor & microswitch.
Left side of the valve, showing the gearing under the motor, & the valve body under the powerhead.
Right side of the valve, showing the sprung mechanism of the valve quadrant.
Here the motor has been removed from the powerhead, showing the microswitch & the sprung quadrant gear. This spring keeps the valve closed until the motor is energized. The motor remains energized to hold the valve open.
Here the valve body has been opened showing the internal components. The rubber valve rotates on the shaft, blocking the lower port of the valve when in operation.
The motor’s protective cap has been removed here showing the rotor. This is a synchronous motor, of a special type for use in motorised valves. As the windings need to be continuously energized to hold the valve open, it is designed not to burn out under this load. 240v AC 50Hz, 5RPM.
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.
Internals
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.
Motor
Here is the drive motor disconnected from the gearbox, having a bayonet fitting on the drive end.
Drive Gear
This is the primary drive gear of the motor, which connects with the gearbox.
Cooling Fan
The motor is cooled by this fan inside next to the commutator, drawing air over the windings.
Gearbox
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.
Charger
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.
Transformer
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.
Charger PCB
This is the charger PCB, with a ST Microelectronics controller IC marked 6HKB07501758. I cannot find any information about this chip.
Battery Pack Internals
Here is a battery pack with the top removed, showing the cells.
Temperature Sensor
This is the temperature sensor embedded inside the battery pack that is used by the charger to determine when charging is complete.
Here is a more modern phone, the Motorola V360v. Features include Dual screens, 640×480 VGA camera, full col
our TFT Main LCD, SD-Micro slot.
Here on the back the grey scale LCD can be seen, with the camera lens to the right of the Motorola logo
Keypad
Here the phone is opened showing the keypad & the full colour TFT LCD display.
Battery Compartment
Here the battery is removed from the unit, showing the SIM connector. The antenna cover is still on at the bottom.
Antenna
The antenna cover has been removed in this shot, the antenna is the white section at the bottom, With the loudspeaker & the external antenna connector hidden at the right.
PCB
Here is the main PCB. Parts from left are the Bluetooth module at the top, supplied by Broadcom, the SD Card socket at the bottom. Main CPU next to that is the Freescale SC29343VKP. Above right of the CPU is the Freescale SC13890P23A Charger, Power & Audio IC. Below is the SIM card socket. Under the main CPU is the Intel Flash memory IC. ICs inside the shields are the RF sections for transmit & receive.
Cover Removed
Rear of the display unit showing the monochrome LCD. The camera module on the bottom left. Ear speaker on the far right of the unit.
Main LCD
Main colour TFT LCD.
Camera
Camera module removed from the LCD unit.
Vibra-Motor
The vibration motor attached to one of the LCD looms.
Another phone from the mid 90s. This is the nokia 7110.
Slider Open
Here the slider is open showing the keypad.
Battery Removed
Here the battery is removed, a Li-Ion unit.
Battery
The battery cell & protection circuit removed from the casing.
Rear Of PCB
This is the rear of the PCB removed from the housing. Data & charging ports on the right hand side f the board.
Front Of PCB
Front of the PCB with the RF sections at the left hand side & the keypad contacts on the right.
RF Sections
Closeup of the RF sections of the board, big silver rectangular cans are VCO units.
SIM Connector
Closeup of the top rear section of the PCB, with SIM cnnector, battery contacts, IR tranciever at the far left. Bottom centre is the external antenna connector.
CPU
The logic section of the board, Large chip is CPU, to right of that is the ROM storing the machine code. Other chips are unknown custom parts.
Mic & Speaker
The Mic & the loudspeaker removed from it’s housing.
LCD
LCD from the front of the unit, SPI interfaced. Flex PCB also contains the power button, loudspeaker contacts & a temperature sensor.
Scroll Wheel
The scroll wheel removed from the front housing.
Vibra-Motor
Tiny vibration motor removed from the rear housing, alerts the user to a text or phone call.
Here we have a Dremel MultiPro rotary tool, a main powered 125W 33,000RPM bit of kit.
Motor Assembly
Here the field & controller assembly is removed from the casing.
Armature
Here is the armature, which rotates at up to 33,000RPM. The brushes rise against the commutator on the left, next to the bearing, the cooling fan is on the right hand side on the power output shaft, the chuck attaches at the far right end of the shaft.
Speed Controller & Brush Box
Here is the speed controller unit, inside is an SCR phase angle speed controller, to vary the speed of the motor from 10,000RPM to the full rated speed of 33,000RPM.
Mains Filter
This is the mains filter on the input to the unit, stops stray RF from the motor being radiated down the mains cable.
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