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  • Author Author: jw0752
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Anyone seen circuit modules like this before?

jw0752

I am busy salvaging circuit boards while my mind resets and a new idea for a build takes form. Yesterday I disassembled a circuit board from a Planmeca X-Ray machine (a company from Finland) that dated from the 1990s. Among the salvaged components were a few that looked like this:

 

   imageimage

 

I have seen something similar in other equipment that was packaged in brown ceramic but this is the first time I have come across this style. I believe I even knew the name of this type of circuit that was popular about 30 to 40 years ago but the name eludes me at this time.

 

I am curious if any one knows more about them. Were they general electronic parts or were they manufactured for specific applications and OEM only? So far I have not been able to get the internet to cough up anything about them.

 

Thanks

 

John

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Thank you Michael, your post was very useful as the terminology that you provided allowed me to unlock the information on the internet. It is nice to get a better insight into this technology and its applications.

     

    John

  • They look like what we used to call "thick film hybrids". These were ceramic substrates with track and resistors printed on and fired. Then some normal parts were surface mounted on top. They were a good halfway house between through hole pcb (which was prevalent at the time) and custom chips. The advent of current surface mount technology has pretty much done away with them. The NRE charges are much higher than for surface mount on FR4 but for some applications they are still a viable approach.

     

    MK

  • in reply to Fred27

    Hi Fred,

     

    I see that Tado is out of Munich Germany which continues to point to a European source for this type of modular circuit though a close look at your picture shows a global sourcing for the rest of the parts. I was surprised to see that your thermostat is from as recent as 2010. Perhaps the advantages of this style of circuit, whatever they are, wasn't obsoleted by new technology as quickly as I surmised. Thanks again for your reply.

     

    John

  • I've seen similar modules in more recent electronics. This is a photo of the inside of my Tado (v1.0) thermostat from about 2010. I believe it was a either a DC/DC convertor or switch mode power supply under that blue coating. I can't remember which.

    Tado V1