Reverse Engineering the Neat Semiconductors in a Label Maker
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- čas přidán 24. 05. 2019
- Tear down of a Brother PT-90 label maker. Lots of neat looking semiconductors!
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Neat. I wasn't expecting the printhead to be as simple as the line of conductive ink across the electrode comb. I wonder if the printhead has some simple timing circuitry to avoid a communication issue causing the heaters to remain energised.
Given there is 6 traces directly to the IC. It might be... Vpower, Vcontroller, Ground, Clk, Data, and EnableOutput. So instead of a latch, you just have an enable power mosfet output. Which I would think is reliable enough since you don't need to pump in zero to turn off the output. The disadvantage of course, would be slower speed of printing, since you have to turn off the output to pump in the next line.
@@mofo78536 There is an R-C-link in the enable line so if the micro goes in orbit it won't fry the heaters.
Please don't let this channel die man, this is sooo good!
"My label maker stopped working... AWESOME! Now I can take it apart!"
The thermal printing PCB is fascinating.
It would be messy, but I'd like to see you tear down an inkjet print head.
Microwave Dave Search for the HP Journal archives. Through the 80s and 90s, they published many articles about the development of their inkjet technology. It’s absolutely fascinating.
no matter how complex the matrix: it's a fairly straight forward node.
You deserve a million subscribers
I love my P-Touch labeler and being OCD to begin with I label most things around the workbench and ham radio desk...'course the better half put her foot down when I thought about the kitchen cabinets; she drew the line there! Thanks for sharing!
you describe the common line for all the resistive segments as a "ground line" at 1:59. i would have expected the common rail to be positive, so that the MOSFETs could be the more efficient N-channel type
I'd love to see a tear down for a Brother Scan N Cut SDX 125 and 325 models. In particular to see if the on-board computer and other components can be user upgraded or modified for faster performance, more storage, use without a mat.
so cool! now i want to look for broken label makers on ebay to harvest their heads and build something weird...
God, I love your work....
Thanks for another great video, very interesting.
Cool video! All video content is top notch
Useful video. Very nice
Clever and simple little print head 👍
Impressive, and simple design
Thanks for sharing :-)
Not made by Brother, but common to almost any thermal printhead, just that they make the bigger ones by cascading those little drivers and then have a few in series driven from the same serial data stream, and then a few parallel series strings to get the speed up, basically making the print head in electrical segments on the same ceramic substrate. Biggest ones are those on thermal fax machines, where you find the same 64 bit drivers repeated. and the flex cable has a wide power and ground trace ( 18V is a typical drive voltage) and then thinner traces with the data streams, the clock and the latch and enable pulses. Darkness of the print is by controlling the length of the enable pulse, so the print head spot gets warmer, and overall on the bigger print heads there is a thermal sensor to cut power on the head overheating. Pretty never much going to get the head shutting down thermally though, the driver just slows down as it heats up.
They do fail though, eventually wearing through the glass coating on the resistors, and you get single driver outputs that fail, putting a blank line in the print, and as well failing flex bonds that make the image lose whatever segment line is affected. In general the heads are available as spare parts on the more expensive machines, like those used in supermarket mass meters, but they will do in general over a million kilometers of print without failure, just clean them regularly from the adhesive build up.
Ah man this is I love your channel
My P-Touch 1830 has a very similar PCB, but uses a different flex connector on the printhead. Maybe they can be re-used/hacked with some simple microcontroller code to print anything you want, including graphics, e.g. barcodes? The governor isn't actually too bad of a choice of wording, as it governs the speed the motor is turning very precisely, regardless of the battery voltage applied. This saves them from using a stepper motor, or any kind of rotary encoder to keep the DC motor's speed constant.
I'd like to see more of the structures on the power fets. Perhaps a couple different kinds? I know various companies advertise their proprietary structures that make their brand better.
i wonder if you see bad block cells or somekind damage in flash memory,if u had enough good microscopes.
You should sell T-Shits I would buy some.
3:39 I don't think the data comes in that pin. In the next picture you show, all those pins in the middle are commoned together.
I think that label is actually thermal transfer. There is a black ribbon in the cartridge which gets its ink transferred to the tape via a thermal process. A example of a direct thermal label would be the dymo letratag. There is no ink ribbon in that cartridge. Also, almost all thermal print heads are made by a supplier like Toshiba or ALPS. I doubt brother made that print head.
jak p Nope. You’re thinking of the higher end Brother labelers that use the TZ/TZe tapes, which are laminated thermal transfer. But the model here, the PT-90, uses the Brother M tapes, which are simple direct thermal.
Not Kapton. Flat-Flex, which is still a trade name for circuit bonded polyimide. RGBK is pretty standard for Red Green Blue Black
Euro Bum Kapton IS the common name for polyimide... 🤦♂️