ToddFun.com

(part 2 of 2)

You may want to read part 1 first.

The person whose Seagate micro USB drive I was trying to fix bought a second working unit from eBay for under $20 bucks.

Below are the two Seagate micro USB drives. One working unit from eBay the other not working and needing data recovery if possible.  The task? Switch the platters and hope the working unit will read the old disk.

Disassembling the new unit to get out the platter

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(part 1 of 2)

A coworker’s mother had irreplaceable data on this Seagate thumb drive.  Normally I would just say sorry you’re out of luck but I thought I would be nice and at least check for a broken wire or trace. 

Turns out it was not a standard solid state thumb drive but an older 6gig micro hard drive.  Cool! If I couldn’t fix it I know I sure would have fun taking it apart.  Such devices normally only come apart but this clever little drive disassembles quite nicely and was easy to clean and put back together. 

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Part2:

 I’m attempting to diagnose a problem with the motor power supply for a small metal lathe. This is part 2 so you may want to read part 1 first.

 I know the 120v AC mains are flowing through a monolith bridge rectifier and coming out as a fully rectified pulsing DC signal. This rectified DC signal is smoothed out by a very large 220v 300uF cap which is then supplying “somewhat clean” DC to the (+) terminal on the motor.  Notice I didn’t say anything about a transformer because there isn’t one.  That means the voltage to the motor is not being stepped down; just full wave rectified and smoothed out with a large cap.

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