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Someone in 1988 had a boring job...

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AVGresponding:
I rather doubt the market for garden lights is so fiercely competitive that this has any point whatsoever. All it does in my mind is increase the manufacturing cost by adding another processing step and requiring additional equipment and consumables (grinding wheels, sandpaper, file, whatever they are using).

PlainName:
Could  be just part of The Process. Maybe they make other stuff which is rather more sensitive to being ripped and their in-house process includes removing markings, just like it might also include "bend through-hole leads at 45 degrees".

AVGresponding:
You really think producers of cheap tat like this also make anything high end? Colour me sceptical.

PlainName:
'Sensitive' doesn't have to equate to 'high-end'. And whoever puts that together is probably a contract house who build for many clients. I have no idea if that is the case, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility - guidelines are blindly followed regardless of appropriateness all over the place.

AndyBeez:

--- Quote from: AVGresponding on October 16, 2022, 10:01:47 am ---You really think producers of cheap tat like this also make anything high end? Colour me sceptical.

--- End quote ---
Industrial espionage, certainly not with this tat; but when you guys now know the PCBs seemed hand soldered, maybe the obscuration was to prevent component theft by the poor bastards who were enslaved on the one dollar and a bowl of rice a day assembly line. This solar light retailed for ONE British pound. How much would that inductor alone cost from Digikey?

As for reverse engineering, it's always a cool mind challenge to discover what parts a manufacturer deemed restricted. But figuring out their motivation is less than clear, even when the part turns out to be nothing more than an obsoleted ST microcontroller. Maybe it's the build customer they're out to deceive when they might have to qualify where their stock came from? It would be very tempting to paint or grind an opamp with a 1990s date code, if it were priced 25 years later.

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