[Random Teardowns] Industrial motor soft-starter

Device: Telemechanique Industrial Motor Soft-start controller

Origin: Gift / Acquaintance
Reason for teardown: That's why I got it
Impressions: Obviously something went horribly wrong inside this thing and the pins of the high current relays prompty evaporated when it happened. It contained some fairly useful components that survived the ordeal. The large heatsinked modules are POWERSEM 100A (that's one hundred amperes) dual thyristor(SCR) modules perfect for heavy duty AC power controllers or solid state relays (which I ended up making out of them). The mains tranformer also found a new home since in a garage door opener remote control box.

Yikes!

 That's a PIC.. I can probably use that too for something (not really.. I do AVRs but too lazy to do anything with those even nowadays..).

 Another evaporated pin

Mains and pulse transformers

[Random Teardowns] Chinese HDMI to VGA converter

Device: Chinese HDMI to VGA converter
Origin: eBay / China
Reason for teardown: Curiosity
Impressions: Never heard of the chip or the manufacturer. The thing works fine though. Does a great job with a Raspberry Pi as well.

Lontium LT8511A

Dead ballast

Just posting to share some pictures.
The thing is an OSRAM Electronic Ballast for T8 fluorescent tubes.
Hard to tell what the heck really happened here. Walked in the room today to find one set of tubes dark. Took off the cover and noticed a faint sour smell. Tried powercycling which resulted in flickering then nothing. Second attempt resulted in a loud pop and the Rubycon YXA violently spewing electrolyte all over the ballast board. Definitely not a dry-out issue at least :) Two FETs on the board are now pieces of wire. I suspect the smell I noticed the first time was the electrolyte because it got a lot more intense after the cap full on vented but I guess I'll never know for sure. The whole board is potted nastiness and a repair attempt is not worth my time.

[Random Teardowns] WILLHI WH7016 Digital Thermostat

Decided to start posting teardown mini-articles from time to time. These will mostly be photos with the odd comment here and there.


The subject of the first in the series:

Device: WILLHI WH7016 Digital Thermostat
Origin: eBay / China
Reason for teardown: Curiosity
Impressions: A solid build for how cheap the thing is.

 

Small update:
Bought another one of these in 2014. Same model from what I could tell but severely diminished functionality(can only set temp to whole degrees even though it measures to .1, no alarm function, hysteresis only works in one direction, single (albeit higher current) relay). Also higher power consumption, lower quality plastic and it feels a lot less responsive. I could swear it also cost more than the first one did, hrmm...