Category: Teardown

This category will hold teardown articles.

Voltlog #209 – Cheap Electric Desoldering Pump Teardown

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’re doing a teardown of this electric desoldering pump, which I showed in a previous mailbag video. This had a major when I powered it one, in fact I’m not gonna try to power it on again because I don’t want all that smoke to fill-up my lab again.

Voltlog #198 – SUNKKO 737G Battery Spot Welding Machine Review & Teardown

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today a review video. So you know I’ve been talking about building my own spot welding machine in previous videos, that project is still active but progress is slow. In the meantime I’ve been contacted by banggood they wanted to offer something for review and I thought I’d try out a chinese spot welding machine, this way I could have something to compare with.

So I picked this model from their inventory the SUNKKO 737G, I got the 220V version for EU, if you live in a 110V country, you need to choose the appropriate model. If you’re interested checkout the links in the description below the video.

So why do we need a spot welding machine? Because it provide a safe & reliable way of connecting battery cells. Sure you could take the risk and try to solder your battery cells, I have done that in the past but I would rather avoid doing it if I can because it’s risky, the temperature of the cell will rise too much while heating it up with the soldering iron. This machine does it in the blink of an eye so the cell doesn’t get hot at all.

Voltlog #190 – Bad Product Design

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today I’m gonna talk about bad product design but not in general, I’m not gonna cover all of the things that could go wrong in product design, I am gonna focus on a particular case that I encountered recently which is related to standby power usage.

So if you’re gonna design a product that’s gonna be spending most of the time in standby, I’m talking about a product that has a soft power switch, so the product will spend most of the time in standby waiting for you to press the power up button, maybe once a day, or even multiple times, but then it will go back to sleep until next case. You would of course want to optimize the power usage in standby because that could potentially drain the battery and when you wanna turn it on, there is no more juice left.

But it seems like this simple concept is not really used, even now in 2018, you would think, every product designer would master this simple concept but that’s not the case.

Voltlog #188 – LIDL Silvercrest Thermostat Teardown

Hello and welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’re going to be doing a teardown and analysis of this SilverCrest Radiator Thermostat. Silvercrest is a LIDL brand, you will find these product in LIDL shops and I paid about $15 for this thermostat. It’s compatible only with radiators that have special thermostat type valves, installed, the ones that have a push-pin which controls the flow and since I don’t have those installed on my radiators I have also purchased one of those valves to see the thermostat in action.

Now this thermostat doesn’t have any kind of wireless connection, you have to set it up manually using these buttons. However I’ve noticed that in other countries LIDL sells a similar model, looks the same but also has bluetooth connection and then you can use a smartphone app to configure it with ease. I’m gonna go ahead and speculate that LIDL decided to sell these budget thermostats without bluetooth in east europe, while they sell the better equipped model in central and west europe.

Voltlog #175 – Aneng AN302 Pocket Multimeter Review & Teardown

Welcome everyone, review time again, today we are taking a closer look at this pocket multimeter. It’s the Aneng AN302, 8000 count, true RMS multimeters. It comes with this black pouch and inside, the meter is wrapped in some bubble wrap. I don’t know about you but when I’m receiving stuff from China it always contains this popped bubble wrap, have you noticed the same? I wonder why the bubble wrap is already popped, cause it kinda defeats the purpose.

Here are some links where you can order the Aneng AN302 Pocket Multimeter: Aliexpress, Amazon, Ebay,  Banggood. 

Here are some links with the other items mentioned in this video:

Here is the pocket multimeter spreadsheet where I list all the meters I’ve looked at.

Voltlog #174 – UNI-T UT125C Pocket Multimeter Review

Hello and welcome everyone, today it’s review time and we are taking a look at the UNI-T UT125C Pocket Multimeter. This is a 4000 count, CAT III 600V pocket meter they claim but as we’ll see in a moment it’s a bit bigger than an actual pocket meter.

Here are some links where you can order the UNI-T UT125C Pocket Multimeter: Aliexpress, Amazon, Ebay,  Banggood. 

Here are some links with the other items mentioned in this video:

Here is the pocket multimeter spreadsheet where I list all the meters I’ve looked at.

 

Voltlog #168 – Polycom CX600 IP Phone and Jabra 410 Speaker Teardown

A viewer sent in a Polycom CX600 IP Phone and a Jabra 410 Speaker for a teardown and a teardown I did. The phone has this TI TNET series system on chip, I couldn’t find any info on that but it looks like it may contain an ARM11. The speaker interestingly contained a bluetooth chip even though it doesn’t have a bluetooth feature but an explanation for that is given in the video.

Voltlog #166 – LRC Reference Box (Hao QI Xin)

In this video we are taking a closer look at the Hao QI Xin LRC Reference Box which contains a couple of polystyrene capacitors, a vishay precision resistor and an un-marked inductor. I also talk about getting the AD584 voltage reference box, however it is hard to find the LH version as most seller will be sending you the KH version which is a lower grade of stability.

Here are some links mentioned in the video:

Voltlog #165 – USAMS 3 Port USB Charger With Display Review & Teardown

In this video I am taking a look at the USAMS 3 Port USB Charger With Display. Turns out the same charger is sold under many different names, and I suspect inside there is the same circuit labeled USB320G.

Like I mentioned in the past China is improving the designs of these charger each year so the situation is much better now than it was a few years back. There would still be the $2 death traps disguised as apple chargers but in the $10 range you can get some pretty decent chargers with adequate protection. This charger has the required protection features to make it safe to use however its not special in any way, the noise level is higher than I would like and the output current of just 3A is not enough for charging 3 devices. Not even 2 at the same time if they both require more current.

Here are links to where you can find this charger: Banggood, Aliexpress,  Amazon.