Yesterday, I received a new FY8300S arbitrary signal generator. When unpacking it, the first thing I noticed was that there was something rattling around inside the case! So, regardless of breaking any warranty stickers, opening up the case and finding what was rattling around was the first priority before applying any power.
The case is great fun to take apart as the two ends now clip onto the main housing in four positions instead of two, so it turned out to be quite a battle. Thankfully, the tool marks on the plastic will be hidden once I put it back together. While I have everything in bits, I thought people might appreciate some tear down shots.
Everything looks very familiar from the FY6900. The same power supply, a very similar mainboard (re-spun to add the third output channel) and the same, unsafe grounding modification.
The rattling turned out to be one of the screws which hold the fan to the rear panel:
When I went to remove the other three screws, I immediately understood why the first one had fallen out. The screws are way too short for the job and as they have conical starts (being self tapping) hardly grip the mounting holes at all.
The fan itself is a 12V fan which seems to be running on 5V. It's certainly quiet and runs all the time when the machine is plugged in unless it is turned off via the switch on the mains input socket. It blows air from the case to the outside, pulling air into the case via the slots in the lower half, which are all nicely free of flashing. The wires to the fan sit on top of the wires carrying mains voltage from the mains input socket.
Here's the main PCB:
FeelTech couldn't be bothered re-spinning the PCB again to add a socket for the fan and have simply tacked the fan's power wires to a nearby regulator (which is now under a tiny heatsink which it shares with another regulator).
As the wires to the fan are just flapping around in the breeze, it's only a matter of time before they snap off where they are soldered to the regulator.
Finally, here's the power supply board. It still has a glass fuse. On mine, the ceramic capacitor just to the right of the fuse is actually fitted. I've seen pictures of the supply in the FY6900 and that capacitor often seems to be missing for some reason.
There are a few things that need doing before I put it all back together:
1. Fix the mains input socket wiring to properly insulate and strain relieve all the connections.
2. Return the number of grounding wires between the power supply and main PCB to two instead of one.
3. Secure the fan power wires and fit screws of the correct length to hold the fan securely.
4. Provide a properly insulated resistive connection between PE and power supply ground.
5. Put some heatsink compound between the output op-amps and their heatsink.
6. The soldering on the NOS relays seems to have been done after the board was assembled. I guess nobody bothered cleaning the pins of the relays before soldering as some of the joints are hardly making a connection (as far as I can see through the layer of flux which wasn't cleaned off the board after soldering the relays and output BNC connectors).
Given that FeelTech have seen the criticisms of the power connector connections and the grounding arrangement from the FY6900, it's disappointing to see them repeating the same mistakes in the latest design. The way the fan has been added is amateurish to say the least.