Name that Ware May 2017

The Ware for May 2017 is shown below.

This is another one where the level difficulty will depend on if I cropped enough detail out of the photo to make it challenging but not impossible. If you do figure this one out quickly, curious to hear which detail tipped you off!

34 Responses to “Name that Ware May 2017”

  1. Paul Warren says:

    looks like a radio of some sort. ST Micro in foreground on the control board, heatsink in background with what looks like a post to hold a grounding bolt, flat flex cables and wires going all over the place! Very reminiscent of the insides of my Yaesu FT-817.

  2. Greg Doerr says:

    I believe it’s a print-head (either impact or thermal). At least part of it appears to slide on the metal rod in the lower left of the picture. The clear strip running though the middle of the image looks translucent with regular vertical black bars to assist with positioning.

    There is a black plastic piece under the double flex-circuit that I’m guessing is an optical sensor for the plastic strip.

    • Greg Doerr says:

      I just have this feeling that it’s a carriage assembly from an HP DesignJet printer/plotter from the early 2000’s. Nothing else to back it other than it “looks” HP.

      The white flex circuit is probably the traveling cable that connects back to the main board.

  3. Per says:

    I think it’s a carriage for an inkjet printer or plotter.

  4. tayken says:

    I’m gonna go with printer as well but not a print-head. 4 wire connector on the foreground seems to be connected to a motor in the background, upper-left quadrant. White Foxconn flex connector is probably tied to the print-head and the other flex cables are probably tied to some external circuitry related to keyboard-display interface and whatnot.

  5. Lucas says:

    Some kind of print head. Optical encoder is a good clue as well as what looks like a nice hole for a guide rail to go through on the top left. I’d bet the bundle of wires and gray thing on the left is a stepper motor and wires.

  6. Tim B says:

    Hmmm… My guess is that it is the inside of a gaming console, though not specifically sure which one.

  7. Hugo says:

    Clearly some kind of CNC/motion control equipment (clue: the encoder strip and smooth rod / linear rail). The construction looks non-cost-optimised, so I don’t think it could be a consumer inkjet printer. The complexity on the moving head also suggests that it isn’t a laser cutter or extrusion-based 3D printer, and it isn’t protected enough to be a waterjet or mill/lathe/etc. My guess: an industrial/large format inkjet printer, or a inkjet-style (e.g. Objet) 3D printer.

  8. Ole says:

    I guess a scanner. Optical encoder strip, sliding linear bearing in the bottom left. Most scanners have all their “Magic” in the “Head” these days, running USB from the head to the case somewhere.
    I saw a lot of the NTW PCS where scanned on a CCD scanner. Probably this one?

  9. Adrian says:

    I have a very similar PCB from the printhead carrier of an HP Officejet Pro L7580.

    Similar size, exactly the same set of connectors, an optical encoder, a few mosfets and big electrolytic caps. Unfortunately, the layout isn’t an exact match, and the HP PCB uses an HP branded MCU from AMI.

  10. Andrew says:

    I’m getting invalid request for the image now.

    • sam says:

      I don’t know why – but the image also suddenly disappeared for me. Sadly, none of the archive.{org,is} mirrors nor “google cache” have the image stored – but I can help out with a screenshot.

      https://i.imgur.com/rzGlafO.png

      • bunnie says:

        Strange…is it back now? I can see it from my end.

        • Chris says:

          I get invalid request if I have the HTTPSAnywhere addon enabled; looks like the https request for the image is what returns bad request. Seems fine when I switch it off for this site.

  11. V Smap says:

    The optical encoder strip and linear rails/bearings give a good genre to look at, but coming up short on the details. What looks to be a heatsink suggests more wattage than an inkjet plotter would use and the flex circuits look newer than any pen plotter. Except that… that heatsink looks like black plastic. Hmmm… Inkjet cartridge bays? Wish I could find the specs on that ST microcontroller…

  12. joe says:

    I’ll vote for inkjet printer main or interconnect board. Lot of flat flexes though which ceratinly don’t all go to the print head. The printer could have an LCD touch screen and card reader though.

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  14. faulty says:

    On first glance, looks like a dot matrix print head assembly. The 2 brown flex cables, one of it has wide tracks, indicating the high current needed by dot matrix or something to drive solenoids. But the weird thing is the brown flex cable with thin tracks, as for dot matrix, it’s usually wider and even width, this could mean there’s probably some sensors on the carriage maybe for alignment. Definitely not inkjet as the current required is lower and the board is unlikely to be mounted on the carriage. The white flat flex should be going back to the main board, and a long one to allow. Also I’ve not seen encoder strips use in dot matrix printers.

    So my guess would be some sort of machine use in PCB assembly like a pick and place, which requires higher precision. The high current could be for the dispenser, vacuum line solenoid or stencil printer. I found a few pictures online having the same linear rod with the encoder strips, but none shows the PCB in the carriage. Plus I’m not too familiar with the PCB assembly industry to know well enough of what’s in there.

  15. Joe Bleau says:

    HP DesignJet plotter?

  16. cal says:

    Looks like it is time for some anti-spam measures. :-(

    • Joe says:

      yeah, full ACK. Bunny, you should consider activating the moderation feature.

      By the way, I think the rather large capacitors in the photo indicate that this is not a moving part. Otherwise I would expect them to be glued down to the board. An engineer would certainly try to save weight in moving parts, too, and place these heavier components somewhere else. If you have ever seen an inkjet print head in action, you know why.

      • bunnie says:

        Dunno what happened, usually Akismet catches spam pretty well. It seems occasionally someone either figures out an exploit on the anti-spam algorithm or they DoS the Akismet server. Akismet filters out about 15,000 spam posts a month so in general it’s doing alright…

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  18. Tyson Harold says:

    Nice.

  19. PenMyPaper says:

    This is quite a confusing picture. Still let me make a guess: It looks a bit like a barcode printer or an inkjet. Alternately, it also resembles a set of RAM.

  20. Ryan says:

    The picture is confusing but I think it is a printer board. I compared it based on my own experienced.

  21. Alvin says:

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    into difficult decision-making during significant pots.

  22. It seems to me that this is a piece of the motherboard from the printer (inkjet or laser). This is definitely not a computer, because there is no specific PCI-port. So I think this is a printer (samsung or Hp)

  23. The picture is confusing but I think it is a printer board. I compared it based on my own experienced.